System having modular accelerators

ABSTRACT

A storage system, blades, removable modules, and method of configuring a storage system are described. The storage system has blades with computing resources and storage resources. At least one of the blades has, or has added, one or more removable modules.

This application claims benefit of priority from U.S. application Ser. No. 15/653,285 titled DISAGGREGATED COMPUTE RESOURCES AND STORAGE RESOURCES IN A STORAGE SYSTEM filed Jul. 18, 2017, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. application Ser. No. 15/213,447 titled INDEPENDENT SCALING OF COMPUTE RESOURCES AND STORAGE RESOURCES IN A STORAGE SYSTEM filed Jul. 19, 2016.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The technical field to which the invention relates is data storage systems.

BACKGROUND

Data storage needs continue to grow, as do capacities of storage systems. A scalable storage system architecture supports addition of memory, so that the storage system can grow in capacity to meet user needs. Yet, capacity is not the only factor to be considered in scalability. Communication delays among components in a storage system can worsen as more components are added in order to increase capacity. A fixed communication bandwidth can result in communication bottlenecks as added components increase the total number of communications for a given time span in a storage system. Communication delays are especially noticeable and can abruptly worsen when expanding from a single chassis to a multi-chassis storage system. Also, computing power can get strained as more memory is added to a storage system, contributing to lengthening data access times with storage system expansion. It is in this context that present embodiments for storage system scalability arise.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

FIG. 1A illustrates a first example system for data storage in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 1B illustrates a second example system for data storage in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 1C illustrates a third example system for data storage in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 1D illustrates a fourth example system for data storage in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 2A is a perspective view of a storage cluster with multiple storage nodes and internal storage coupled to each storage node to provide network attached storage, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2B is a block diagram showing an interconnect switch coupling multiple storage nodes in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2C is a multiple level block diagram, showing contents of a storage node and contents of one of the non-volatile solid state storage units in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2D shows a storage server environment, which uses embodiments of the storage nodes and storage units of some previous figures in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2E is a blade hardware block diagram, showing a control plane, compute and storage planes, and authorities interacting with underlying physical resources, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2F depicts elasticity software layers in blades of a storage cluster, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2G depicts authorities and storage resources in blades of a storage cluster, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 3A sets forth a diagram of a storage system that is coupled for data communications with a cloud services provider in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 3B sets forth a diagram of a storage system in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 4 sets forth a diagram of a chassis for use in a storage system that supports independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 5 sets forth a diagram of a hybrid blade useful in storage systems that support independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 6 sets forth a diagram of an additional hybrid blade useful in storage systems that support independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 7 sets forth a diagram of a storage blade useful in storage systems that support independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 8 sets forth a diagram of a compute blade useful in storage systems that support independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 9 sets forth a diagram of a storage system that supports independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 10 sets forth a diagram of a storage system that supports independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 11 sets forth a diagram of a set of blades useful in a storage system that supports independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 12 sets forth a block diagram of automated computing machinery comprising an example computer useful in supporting independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 13A sets forth a diagram of a single chassis storage system that has a switch for direct network-connected communication among computing resources and storage resources of the storage system according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 13B sets forth a diagram of a multi-chassis storage system that has a switch for direct network-connected communication among compute resources and storage resources of the storage system according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 14A sets forth a diagram of a storage resource for embodiments of a storage system, with flash memory and a flash controller connected to a switch such as shown in FIGS. 10A and 10B.

FIG. 14B sets forth a diagram of a storage resource for embodiments of a storage system, with flash memory, a NIC (network interface card or network interface controller) and a packet processing control processor, with the NIC connected to a switch such as shown in FIGS. 10A and 10B.

FIG. 14C sets forth a diagram of a storage resource for embodiments of a storage system, with network-connectable flash memory connected to a switch such as shown in FIGS. 10A and 10B.

FIG. 15 sets forth a diagram depicting compute resources voting to assign a host controller for a storage resource to one of the compute resources.

FIG. 16 is a flow diagram of a method of communicating in a storage system that has disaggregated compute resources and storage memory, which can be practiced by embodiments of storage systems described herein and variations thereof.

FIG. 17 illustrates a 10 slot chassis with removable compute blades with 4 slots for flash modules in a 5 rack unit.

FIG. 18 illustrates a 4 controller system in an 8 rack unit with two fabric modules.

FIG. 19 illustrates 5 controllers and 22 custom storage modules with 2 flash modules in a 5 rack unit.

FIG. 20 illustrates a 3 rack unit expansion shelf.

FIG. 21 illustrates servers with up to 8 drive slots each and corresponding fabric modules.

FIG. 22 illustrates rack unit servers that are stateless plus an external shelf.

FIG. 23 illustrates rack unit servers that that include non-volatile random access memory plus an external shelf.

FIG. 24A illustrates a blade with one type of slot for a removable module, accessible by removing the blade from a chassis.

FIG. 24B illustrates a blade with another type of slot for a removable module, accessible without removing the blade from the chassis.

FIG. 24C illustrates a blade with multiple slots for a removable module.

FIG. 25 illustrates a flow diagram of a method that is practiced on or by embodiments of storage systems.

DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS

Example methods, apparatus, and products for storage systems with removable modules in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure are described with reference to the accompanying drawings, beginning with FIG. 1A. FIG. 1A illustrates an example system for data storage, in accordance with some implementations. System 100 (also referred to as “storage system” herein) includes numerous elements for purposes of illustration rather than limitation. It may be noted that system 100 may include the same, more, or fewer elements configured in the same or different manner in other implementations.

System 100 includes a number of computing devices 164A-B. Computing devices (also referred to as “client devices” herein) may be embodied, for example, a server in a data center, a workstation, a personal computer, a notebook, or the like. Computing devices 164A-B may be coupled for data communications to one or more storage arrays 102A-B through a storage area network (‘SAN’) 158 or a local area network (‘LAN’) 160.

The SAN 158 may be implemented with a variety of data communications fabrics, devices, and protocols. For example, the fabrics for SAN 158 may include Fibre Channel, Ethernet, Infiniband, Serial Attached Small Computer System Interface (‘SAS’), or the like. Data communications protocols for use with SAN 158 may include Advanced Technology Attachment (‘ATA’), Fibre Channel Protocol, Small Computer System Interface (‘SCSI’), Internet Small Computer System Interface (‘iSCSI’), HyperSCSI, Non-Volatile Memory Express (‘NVMe’) over Fabrics, or the like. It may be noted that SAN 158 is provided for illustration, rather than limitation. Other data communication couplings may be implemented between computing devices 164A-B and storage arrays 102A-B.

The LAN 160 may also be implemented with a variety of fabrics, devices, and protocols. For example, the fabrics for LAN 160 may include Ethernet (802.3), wireless (802.11), or the like. Data communication protocols for use in LAN 160 may include Transmission Control Protocol (‘TCP’), User Datagram Protocol (‘UDP’), Internet Protocol (‘IP’), HyperText Transfer Protocol (‘HTTP’), Wireless Access Protocol (‘WAP’), Handheld Device Transport Protocol (‘HDTP’), Session Initiation Protocol (‘SIP’), Real Time Protocol (‘RTP’), or the like.

Storage arrays 102A-B may provide persistent data storage for the computing devices 164A-B. Storage array 102A may be contained in a chassis (not shown), and storage array 102B may be contained in another chassis (not shown), in implementations. Storage array 102A and 102B may include one or more storage array controllers 110A-D (also referred to as “controller” herein). A storage array controller 110A-D may be embodied as a module of automated computing machinery comprising computer hardware, computer software, or a combination of computer hardware and software. In some implementations, the storage array controllers 110A-D may be configured to carry out various storage tasks. Storage tasks may include writing data received from the computing devices 164A-B to storage array 102A-B, erasing data from storage array 102A-B, retrieving data from storage array 102A-B and providing data to computing devices 164A-B, monitoring and reporting of disk utilization and performance, performing redundancy operations, such as Redundant Array of Independent Drives (‘RAID’) or RAID-like data redundancy operations, compressing data, encrypting data, and so forth.

Storage array controller 110A-D may be implemented in a variety of ways, including as a Field Programmable Gate Array (‘FPGA’), a Programmable Logic Chip (‘PLC’), an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (‘ASIC’), System-on-Chip (‘SOC’), or any computing device that includes discrete components such as a processing device, central processing unit, computer memory, or various adapters. Storage array controller 110A-D may include, for example, a data communications adapter configured to support communications via the SAN 158 or LAN 160. In some implementations, storage array controller 110A-D may be independently coupled to the LAN 160. In implementations, storage array controller 110A-D may include an I/O controller or the like that couples the storage array controller 110A-D for data communications, through a midplane (not shown), to a persistent storage resource 170A-B (also referred to as a “storage resource” herein). The persistent storage resource 170A-B main include any number of storage drives 171A-F (also referred to as “storage devices” herein) and any number of non-volatile Random Access Memory (‘NVRAM’) devices (not shown).

In some implementations, the NVRAM devices of a persistent storage resource 170A-B may be configured to receive, from the storage array controller 110A-D, data to be stored in the storage drives 171A-F. In some examples, the data may originate from computing devices 164A-B. In some examples, writing data to the NVRAM device may be carried out more quickly than directly writing data to the storage drive 171A-F. In implementations, the storage array controller 110A-D may be configured to utilize the NVRAM devices as a quickly accessible buffer for data destined to be written to the storage drives 171A-F. Latency for write requests using NVRAM devices as a buffer may be improved relative to a system in which a storage array controller 110A-D writes data directly to the storage drives 171A-F. In some implementations, the NVRAM devices may be implemented with computer memory in the form of high bandwidth, low latency RAM. The NVRAM device is referred to as “non-volatile” because the NVRAM device may receive or include a unique power source that maintains the state of the RAM after main power loss to the NVRAM device. Such a power source may be a battery, one or more capacitors, or the like. In response to a power loss, the NVRAM device may be configured to write the contents of the RAM to a persistent storage, such as the storage drives 171A-F.

In implementations, storage drive 171A-F may refer to any device configured to record data persistently, where “persistently” or “persistent” refers as to a device's ability to maintain recorded data after loss of power. In some implementations, storage drive 171A-F may correspond to non-disk storage media. For example, the storage drive 171A-F may be one or more solid-state drives (‘SSDs’), flash memory based storage, any type of solid-state non-volatile memory, or any other type of non-mechanical storage device. In other implementations, storage drive 171A-F may include mechanical or spinning hard disk, such as hard-disk drives (‘HDD’).

In some implementations, the storage array controllers 110A-D may be configured for offloading device management responsibilities from storage drive 171A-F in storage array 102A-B. For example, storage array controllers 110A-D may manage control information that may describe the state of one or more memory blocks in the storage drives 171A-F. The control information may indicate, for example, that a particular memory block has failed and should no longer be written to, that a particular memory block contains boot code for a storage array controller 110A-D, the number of program-erase (‘P/E’) cycles that have been performed on a particular memory block, the age of data stored in a particular memory block, the type of data that is stored in a particular memory block, and so forth. In some implementations, the control information may be stored with an associated memory block as metadata. In other implementations, the control information for the storage drives 171A-F may be stored in one or more particular memory blocks of the storage drives 171A-F that are selected by the storage array controller 110A-D. The selected memory blocks may be tagged with an identifier indicating that the selected memory block contains control information. The identifier may be utilized by the storage array controllers 110A-D in conjunction with storage drives 171A-F to quickly identify the memory blocks that contain control information. For example, the storage controllers 110A-D may issue a command to locate memory blocks that contain control information. It may be noted that control information may be so large that parts of the control information may be stored in multiple locations, that the control information may be stored in multiple locations for purposes of redundancy, for example, or that the control information may otherwise be distributed across multiple memory blocks in the storage drive 171A-F.

In implementations, storage array controllers 110A-D may offload device management responsibilities from storage drives 171A-F of storage array 102A-B by retrieving, from the storage drives 171A-F, control information describing the state of one or more memory blocks in the storage drives 171A-F. Retrieving the control information from the storage drives 171A-F may be carried out, for example, by the storage array controller 110A-D querying the storage drives 171A-F for the location of control information for a particular storage drive 171A-F. The storage drives 171A-F may be configured to execute instructions that enable the storage drive 171A-F to identify the location of the control information. The instructions may be executed by a controller (not shown) associated with or otherwise located on the storage drive 171A-F and may cause the storage drive 171A-F to scan a portion of each memory block to identify the memory blocks that store control information for the storage drives 171A-F. The storage drives 171A-F may respond by sending a response message to the storage array controller 110A-D that includes the location of control information for the storage drive 171A-F. Responsive to receiving the response message, storage array controllers 110A-D may issue a request to read data stored at the address associated with the location of control information for the storage drives 171A-F.

In other implementations, the storage array controllers 110A-D may further offload device management responsibilities from storage drives 171A-F by performing, in response to receiving the control information, a storage drive management operation. A storage drive management operation may include, for example, an operation that is typically performed by the storage drive 171A-F (e.g., the controller (not shown) associated with a particular storage drive 171A-F). A storage drive management operation may include, for example, ensuring that data is not written to failed memory blocks within the storage drive 171A-F, ensuring that data is written to memory blocks within the storage drive 171A-F in such a way that adequate wear leveling is achieved, and so forth.

In implementations, storage array 102A-B may implement two or more storage array controllers 110A-D. For example, storage array 102A may include storage array controllers 110A and storage array controllers 110B. At a given instance, a single storage array controller 110A-D (e.g., storage array controller 110A) of a storage system 100 may be designated with primary status (also referred to as “primary controller” herein), and other storage array controllers 110A-D (e.g., storage array controller 110A) may be designated with secondary status (also referred to as “secondary controller” herein). The primary controller may have particular rights, such as permission to alter data in persistent storage resource 170A-B (e.g., writing data to persistent storage resource 170A-B). At least some of the rights of the primary controller may supersede the rights of the secondary controller. For instance, the secondary controller may not have permission to alter data in persistent storage resource 170A-B when the primary controller has the right. The status of storage array controllers 110A-D may change. For example, storage array controller 110A may be designated with secondary status, and storage array controller 110B may be designated with primary status.

In some implementations, a primary controller, such as storage array controller 110A, may serve as the primary controller for one or more storage arrays 102A-B, and a second controller, such as storage array controller 110B, may serve as the secondary controller for the one or more storage arrays 102A-B. For example, storage array controller 110A may be the primary controller for storage array 102A and storage array 102B, and storage array controller 110B may be the secondary controller for storage array 102A and 102B. In some implementations, storage array controllers 110C and 110D (also referred to as “storage processing modules”) may neither have primary or secondary status. Storage array controllers 110C and 110D, implemented as storage processing modules, may act as a communication interface between the primary and secondary controllers (e.g., storage array controllers 110A and 110B, respectively) and storage array 102B. For example, storage array controller 110A of storage array 102A may send a write request, via SAN 158, to storage array 102B. The write request may be received by both storage array controllers 110C and 110D of storage array 102B. Storage array controllers 110C and 110D facilitate the communication, e.g., send the write request to the appropriate storage drive 171A-F. It may be noted that in some implementations storage processing modules may be used to increase the number of storage drives controlled by the primary and secondary controllers.

In implementations, storage array controllers 110A-D are communicatively coupled, via a midplane (not shown), to one or more storage drives 171A-F and to one or more NVRAM devices (not shown) that are included as part of a storage array 102A-B. The storage array controllers 110A-D may be coupled to the midplane via one or more data communication links and the midplane may be coupled to the storage drives 171A-F and the NVRAM devices via one or more data communications links. The data communications links described herein are collectively illustrated by data communications links 108A-D and may include a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (‘PCIe’) bus, for example.

FIG. 1B illustrates an example system for data storage, in accordance with some implementations. Storage array controller 101 illustrated in FIG. 1B may similar to the storage array controllers 110A-D described with respect to FIG. 1A. In one example, storage array controller 101 may be similar to storage array controller 110A or storage array controller 110B. Storage array controller 101 includes numerous elements for purposes of illustration rather than limitation. It may be noted that storage array controller 101 may include the same, more, or fewer elements configured in the same or different manner in other implementations. It may be noted that elements of FIG. 1A may be included below to help illustrate features of storage array controller 101.

Storage array controller 101 may include one or more processing devices 104 and random access memory (‘RAM’) 111. Processing device 104 (or controller 101) represents one or more general-purpose processing devices such as a microprocessor, central processing unit, or the like. More particularly, the processing device 104 (or controller 101) may be a complex instruction set computing (‘CISC’) microprocessor, reduced instruction set computing (RISC′) microprocessor, very long instruction word (‘VLIW’) microprocessor, or a processor implementing other instruction sets or processors implementing a combination of instruction sets. The processing device 104 (or controller 101) may also be one or more special-purpose processing devices such as an ASIC, an FPGA, a digital signal processor (‘DSP’), network processor, or the like.

The processing device 104 may be connected to the RAM 111 via a data communications link 106, which may be embodied as a high speed memory bus such as a Double-Data Rate 4 (‘DDR4’) bus. Stored in RAM 111 is an operating system 112. In some implementations, instructions 113 are stored in RAM 111. Instructions 113 may include computer program instructions for performing operations in in a direct-mapped flash storage system. In one embodiment, a direct-mapped flash storage system is one that that addresses data blocks within flash drives directly and without an address translation performed by the storage controllers of the flash drives.

In implementations, storage array controller 101 includes one or more host bus adapters 103A-C that are coupled to the processing device 104 via a data communications link 105A-C. In implementations, host bus adapters 103A-C may be computer hardware that connects a host system (e.g., the storage array controller) to other network and storage arrays. In some examples, host bus adapters 103A-C may be a Fibre Channel adapter that enables the storage array controller 101 to connect to a SAN, an Ethernet adapter that enables the storage array controller 101 to connect to a LAN, or the like. Host bus adapters 103A-C may be coupled to the processing device 104 via a data communications link 105A-C such as, for example, a PCIe bus.

In implementations, storage array controller 101 may include a host bus adapter 114 that is coupled to an expander 115. The expander 115 may be used to attach a host system to a larger number of storage drives. The expander 115 may, for example, be a SAS expander utilized to enable the host bus adapter 114 to attach to storage drives in an implementation where the host bus adapter 114 is embodied as a SAS controller.

In implementations, storage array controller 101 may include a switch 116 coupled to the processing device 104 via a data communications link 109. The switch 116 may be a computer hardware device that can create multiple endpoints out of a single endpoint, thereby enabling multiple devices to share a single endpoint. The switch 116 may, for example, be a PCIe switch that is coupled to a PCIe bus (e.g., data communications link 109) and presents multiple PCIe connection points to the midplane.

In implementations, storage array controller 101 includes a data communications link 107 for coupling the storage array controller 101 to other storage array controllers. In some examples, data communications link 107 may be a QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) interconnect.

A traditional storage system that uses traditional flash drives may implement a process across the flash drives that are part of the traditional storage system. For example, a higher level process of the storage system may initiate and control a process across the flash drives. However, a flash drive of the traditional storage system may include its own storage controller that also performs the process. Thus, for the traditional storage system, a higher level process (e.g., initiated by the storage system) and a lower level process (e.g., initiated by a storage controller of the storage system) may both be performed.

To resolve various deficiencies of a traditional storage system, operations may be performed by higher level processes and not by the lower level processes. For example, the flash storage system may include flash drives that do not include storage controllers that provide the process. Thus, the operating system of the flash storage system itself may initiate and control the process. This may be accomplished by a direct-mapped flash storage system that addresses data blocks within the flash drives directly and without an address translation performed by the storage controllers of the flash drives.

In implementations, storage drive 171A-F may be one or more zoned storage devices. In some implementations, the one or more zoned storage devices may be a shingled HDD. In implementations, the one or more storage devices may be a flash-based SSD. In a zoned storage device, a zoned namespace on the zoned storage device can be addressed by groups of blocks that are grouped and aligned by a natural size, forming a number of addressable zones. In implementations utilizing an SSD, the natural size may be based on the erase block size of the SSD.

The mapping from a zone to an erase block (or to a shingled track in an HDD) may be arbitrary, dynamic, and hidden from view. The process of opening a zone may be an operation that allows a new zone to be dynamically mapped to underlying storage of the zoned storage device, and then allows data to be written through appending writes into the zone until the zone reaches capacity. The zone can be finished at any point, after which further data may not be written into the zone. When the data stored at the zone is no longer needed, the zone can be reset which effectively deletes the zone's content from the zoned storage device, making the physical storage held by that zone available for the subsequent storage of data. Once a zone has been written and finished, the zoned storage device ensures that the data stored at the zone is not lost until the zone is reset. In the time between writing the data to the zone and the resetting of the zone, the zone may be moved around between shingle tracks or erase blocks as part of maintenance operations within the zoned storage device, such as by copying data to keep the data refreshed or to handle memory cell aging in an SSD.

In implementations utilizing an HDD, the resetting of the zone may allow the shingle tracks to be allocated to a new, opened zone that may be opened at some point in the future. In implementations utilizing an SSD, the resetting of the zone may cause the associated physical erase block(s) of the zone to be erased and subsequently reused for the storage of data. In some implementations, the zoned storage device may have a limit on the number of open zones at a point in time to reduce the amount of overhead dedicated to keeping zones open.

The operating system of the flash storage system may identify and maintain a list of allocation units across multiple flash drives of the flash storage system. The allocation units may be entire erase blocks or multiple erase blocks. The operating system may maintain a map or address range that directly maps addresses to erase blocks of the flash drives of the flash storage system.

Direct mapping to the erase blocks of the flash drives may be used to rewrite data and erase data. For example, the operations may be performed on one or more allocation units that include a first data and a second data where the first data is to be retained and the second data is no longer being used by the flash storage system. The operating system may initiate the process to write the first data to new locations within other allocation units and erasing the second data and marking the allocation units as being available for use for subsequent data. Thus, the process may only be performed by the higher level operating system of the flash storage system without an additional lower level process being performed by controllers of the flash drives.

Advantages of the process being performed only by the operating system of the flash storage system include increased reliability of the flash drives of the flash storage system as unnecessary or redundant write operations are not being performed during the process. One possible point of novelty here is the concept of initiating and controlling the process at the operating system of the flash storage system. In addition, the process can be controlled by the operating system across multiple flash drives. This is contrast to the process being performed by a storage controller of a flash drive.

A storage system can consist of two storage array controllers that share a set of drives for failover purposes, or it could consist of a single storage array controller that provides a storage service that utilizes multiple drives, or it could consist of a distributed network of storage array controllers each with some number of drives or some amount of Flash storage where the storage array controllers in the network collaborate to provide a complete storage service and collaborate on various aspects of a storage service including storage allocation and garbage collection.

FIG. 1C illustrates a third example system 117 for data storage in accordance with some implementations. System 117 (also referred to as “storage system” herein) includes numerous elements for purposes of illustration rather than limitation. It may be noted that system 117 may include the same, more, or fewer elements configured in the same or different manner in other implementations.

In one embodiment, system 117 includes a dual Peripheral Component Interconnect (‘PCI’) flash storage device 118 with separately addressable fast write storage. System 117 may include a storage controller 119. In one embodiment, storage controller 119A-D may be a CPU, ASIC, FPGA, or any other circuitry that may implement control structures necessary according to the present disclosure. In one embodiment, system 117 includes flash memory devices (e.g., including flash memory devices 120 a-n), operatively coupled to various channels of the storage device controller 119. Flash memory devices 120 a-n, may be presented to the controller 119A-D as an addressable collection of Flash pages, erase blocks, and/or control elements sufficient to allow the storage device controller 119A-D to program and retrieve various aspects of the Flash. In one embodiment, storage device controller 119A-D may perform operations on flash memory devices 120 a-n including storing and retrieving data content of pages, arranging and erasing any blocks, tracking statistics related to the use and reuse of Flash memory pages, erase blocks, and cells, tracking and predicting error codes and faults within the Flash memory, controlling voltage levels associated with programming and retrieving contents of Flash cells, etc.

In one embodiment, system 117 may include RAM 121 to store separately addressable fast-write data. In one embodiment, RAM 121 may be one or more separate discrete devices. In another embodiment, RAM 121 may be integrated into storage device controller 119A-D or multiple storage device controllers. The RAM 121 may be utilized for other purposes as well, such as temporary program memory for a processing device (e.g., a CPU) in the storage device controller 119.

In one embodiment, system 117 may include a stored energy device 122, such as a rechargeable battery or a capacitor. Stored energy device 122 may store energy sufficient to power the storage device controller 119, some amount of the RAM (e.g., RAM 121), and some amount of Flash memory (e.g., Flash memory 120 a-120 n) for sufficient time to write the contents of RAM to Flash memory. In one embodiment, storage device controller 119A-D may write the contents of RAM to Flash Memory if the storage device controller detects loss of external power.

In one embodiment, system 117 includes two data communications links 123 a, 123 b. In one embodiment, data communications links 123 a, 123 b may be PCI interfaces. In another embodiment, data communications links 123 a, 123 b may be based on other communications standards (e.g., HyperTransport, InfiniBand, etc.). Data communications links 123 a, 123 b may be based on non-volatile memory express (‘NVMe’) or NVMe over fabrics (‘NVMf’) specifications that allow external connection to the storage device controller 119A-D from other components in the storage system 117. It should be noted that data communications links may be interchangeably referred to herein as PCI buses for convenience.

System 117 may also include an external power source (not shown), which may be provided over one or both data communications links 123 a, 123 b, or which may be provided separately. An alternative embodiment includes a separate Flash memory (not shown) dedicated for use in storing the content of RAM 121. The storage device controller 119A-D may present a logical device over a PCI bus which may include an addressable fast-write logical device, or a distinct part of the logical address space of the storage device 118, which may be presented as PCI memory or as persistent storage. In one embodiment, operations to store into the device are directed into the RAM 121. On power failure, the storage device controller 119A-D may write stored content associated with the addressable fast-write logical storage to Flash memory (e.g., Flash memory 120 a-n) for long-term persistent storage.

In one embodiment, the logical device may include some presentation of some or all of the content of the Flash memory devices 120 a-n, where that presentation allows a storage system including a storage device 118 (e.g., storage system 117) to directly address Flash memory pages and directly reprogram erase blocks from storage system components that are external to the storage device through the PCI bus. The presentation may also allow one or more of the external components to control and retrieve other aspects of the Flash memory including some or all of: tracking statistics related to use and reuse of Flash memory pages, erase blocks, and cells across all the Flash memory devices; tracking and predicting error codes and faults within and across the Flash memory devices; controlling voltage levels associated with programming and retrieving contents of Flash cells; etc.

In one embodiment, the stored energy device 122 may be sufficient to ensure completion of in-progress operations to the Flash memory devices 120 a-120 n stored energy device 122 may power storage device controller 119A-D and associated Flash memory devices (e.g., 120 a-n) for those operations, as well as for the storing of fast-write RAM to Flash memory. Stored energy device 122 may be used to store accumulated statistics and other parameters kept and tracked by the Flash memory devices 120 a-n and/or the storage device controller 119. Separate capacitors or stored energy devices (such as smaller capacitors near or embedded within the Flash memory devices themselves) may be used for some or all of the operations described herein.

Various schemes may be used to track and optimize the life span of the stored energy component, such as adjusting voltage levels over time, partially discharging the storage energy device 122 to measure corresponding discharge characteristics, etc. If the available energy decreases over time, the effective available capacity of the addressable fast-write storage may be decreased to ensure that it can be written safely based on the currently available stored energy.

FIG. 1D illustrates a third example system 124 for data storage in accordance with some implementations. In one embodiment, system 124 includes storage controllers 125 a, 125 b. In one embodiment, storage controllers 125 a, 125 b are operatively coupled to Dual PCI storage devices 119 a, 119 b and 119 c, 119 d, respectively. Storage controllers 125 a, 125 b may be operatively coupled (e.g., via a storage network 130) to some number of host computers 127 a-n.

In one embodiment, two storage controllers (e.g., 125 a and 125 b) provide storage services, such as a SCS) block storage array, a file server, an object server, a database or data analytics service, etc. The storage controllers 125 a, 125 b may provide services through some number of network interfaces (e.g., 126 a-d) to host computers 127 a-n outside of the storage system 124. Storage controllers 125 a, 125 b may provide integrated services or an application entirely within the storage system 124, forming a converged storage and compute system. The storage controllers 125 a, 125 b may utilize the fast write memory within or across storage devices 119 a-d to journal in progress operations to ensure the operations are not lost on a power failure, storage controller removal, storage controller or storage system shutdown, or some fault of one or more software or hardware components within the storage system 124.

In one embodiment, controllers 125 a, 125 b operate as PCI masters to one or the other PCI buses 128 a, 128 b. In another embodiment, 128 a and 128 b may be based on other communications standards (e.g., HyperTransport, InfiniBand, etc.). Other storage system embodiments may operate storage controllers 125 a, 125 b as multi-masters for both PCI buses 128 a, 128 b. Alternately, a PCI/NVMe/NVMf switching infrastructure or fabric may connect multiple storage controllers. Some storage system embodiments may allow storage devices to communicate with each other directly rather than communicating only with storage controllers. In one embodiment, a storage device controller 119 a may be operable under direction from a storage controller 125 a to synthesize and transfer data to be stored into Flash memory devices from data that has been stored in RAM (e.g., RAM 121 of FIG. 1C). For example, a recalculated version of RAM content may be transferred after a storage controller has determined that an operation has fully committed across the storage system, or when fast-write memory on the device has reached a certain used capacity, or after a certain amount of time, to ensure improve safety of the data or to release addressable fast-write capacity for reuse. This mechanism may be used, for example, to avoid a second transfer over a bus (e.g., 128 a, 128 b) from the storage controllers 125 a, 125 b. In one embodiment, a recalculation may include compressing data, attaching indexing or other metadata, combining multiple data segments together, performing erasure code calculations, etc.

In one embodiment, under direction from a storage controller 125 a, 125 b, a storage device controller 119 a, 119 b may be operable to calculate and transfer data to other storage devices from data stored in RAM (e.g., RAM 121 of FIG. 1C) without involvement of the storage controllers 125 a, 125 b. This operation may be used to mirror data stored in one controller 125 a to another controller 125 b, or it could be used to offload compression, data aggregation, and/or erasure coding calculations and transfers to storage devices to reduce load on storage controllers or the storage controller interface 129 a, 129 b to the PCI bus 128 a, 128 b.

A storage device controller 119A-D may include mechanisms for implementing high availability primitives for use by other parts of a storage system external to the Dual PCI storage device 118. For example, reservation or exclusion primitives may be provided so that, in a storage system with two storage controllers providing a highly available storage service, one storage controller may prevent the other storage controller from accessing or continuing to access the storage device. This could be used, for example, in cases where one controller detects that the other controller is not functioning properly or where the interconnect between the two storage controllers may itself not be functioning properly.

In one embodiment, a storage system for use with Dual PCI direct mapped storage devices with separately addressable fast write storage includes systems that manage erase blocks or groups of erase blocks as allocation units for storing data on behalf of the storage service, or for storing metadata (e.g., indexes, logs, etc.) associated with the storage service, or for proper management of the storage system itself. Flash pages, which may be a few kilobytes in size, may be written as data arrives or as the storage system is to persist data for long intervals of time (e.g., above a defined threshold of time). To commit data more quickly, or to reduce the number of writes to the Flash memory devices, the storage controllers may first write data into the separately addressable fast write storage on one more storage devices.

In one embodiment, the storage controllers 125 a, 125 b may initiate the use of erase blocks within and across storage devices (e.g., 118) in accordance with an age and expected remaining lifespan of the storage devices, or based on other statistics. The storage controllers 125 a, 125 b may initiate garbage collection and data migration data between storage devices in accordance with pages that are no longer needed as well as to manage Flash page and erase block lifespans and to manage overall system performance.

In one embodiment, the storage system 124 may utilize mirroring and/or erasure coding schemes as part of storing data into addressable fast write storage and/or as part of writing data into allocation units associated with erase blocks. Erasure codes may be used across storage devices, as well as within erase blocks or allocation units, or within and across Flash memory devices on a single storage device, to provide redundancy against single or multiple storage device failures or to protect against internal corruptions of Flash memory pages resulting from Flash memory operations or from degradation of Flash memory cells. Mirroring and erasure coding at various levels may be used to recover from multiple types of failures that occur separately or in combination.

The embodiments depicted with reference to FIGS. 2A-G illustrate a storage cluster that stores user data, such as user data originating from one or more user or client systems or other sources external to the storage cluster. The storage cluster distributes user data across storage nodes housed within a chassis, or across multiple chassis, using erasure coding and redundant copies of metadata. Erasure coding refers to a method of data protection or reconstruction in which data is stored across a set of different locations, such as disks, storage nodes or geographic locations. Flash memory is one type of solid-state memory that may be integrated with the embodiments, although the embodiments may be extended to other types of solid-state memory or other storage medium, including non-solid state memory. Control of storage locations and workloads are distributed across the storage locations in a clustered peer-to-peer system. Tasks such as mediating communications between the various storage nodes, detecting when a storage node has become unavailable, and balancing I/Os (inputs and outputs) across the various storage nodes, are all handled on a distributed basis. Data is laid out or distributed across multiple storage nodes in data fragments or stripes that support data recovery in some embodiments. Ownership of data can be reassigned within a cluster, independent of input and output patterns. This architecture described in more detail below allows a storage node in the cluster to fail, with the system remaining operational, since the data can be reconstructed from other storage nodes and thus remain available for input and output operations. In various embodiments, a storage node may be referred to as a cluster node, a blade, or a server.

The storage cluster may be contained within a chassis, i.e., an enclosure housing one or more storage nodes. A mechanism to provide power to each storage node, such as a power distribution bus, and a communication mechanism, such as a communication bus that enables communication between the storage nodes are included within the chassis. The storage cluster can run as an independent system in one location according to some embodiments. In one embodiment, a chassis contains at least two instances of both the power distribution and the communication bus which may be enabled or disabled independently. The internal communication bus may be an Ethernet bus, however, other technologies such as PCIe, InfiniBand, and others, are equally suitable. The chassis provides a port for an external communication bus for enabling communication between multiple chassis, directly or through a switch, and with client systems. The external communication may use a technology such as Ethernet, InfiniBand, Fibre Channel, etc. In some embodiments, the external communication bus uses different communication bus technologies for inter-chassis and client communication. If a switch is deployed within or between chassis, the switch may act as a translation between multiple protocols or technologies. When multiple chassis are connected to define a storage cluster, the storage cluster may be accessed by a client using either proprietary interfaces or standard interfaces such as network file system (‘NFS’), common internet file system (‘CIFS’), small computer system interface (‘SCSI’) or hypertext transfer protocol (‘HTTP’). Translation from the client protocol may occur at the switch, chassis external communication bus or within each storage node. In some embodiments, multiple chassis may be coupled or connected to each other through an aggregator switch. A portion and/or all of the coupled or connected chassis may be designated as a storage cluster. As discussed above, each chassis can have multiple blades, each blade has a media access control (‘MAC’) address, but the storage cluster is presented to an external network as having a single cluster IP address and a single MAC address in some embodiments.

Each storage node may be one or more storage servers and each storage server is connected to one or more non-volatile solid state memory units, which may be referred to as storage units or storage devices. One embodiment includes a single storage server in each storage node and between one to eight non-volatile solid state memory units, however this one example is not meant to be limiting. The storage server may include a processor, DRAM and interfaces for the internal communication bus and power distribution for each of the power buses. Inside the storage node, the interfaces and storage unit share a communication bus, e.g., PCI Express, in some embodiments. The non-volatile solid state memory units may directly access the internal communication bus interface through a storage node communication bus, or request the storage node to access the bus interface. The non-volatile solid state memory unit contains an embedded CPU, solid state storage controller, and a quantity of solid state mass storage, e.g., between 2-32 terabytes (‘TB’) in some embodiments. An embedded volatile storage medium, such as DRAM, and an energy reserve apparatus are included in the non-volatile solid state memory unit. In some embodiments, the energy reserve apparatus is a capacitor, super-capacitor, or battery that enables transferring a subset of DRAM contents to a stable storage medium in the case of power loss. In some embodiments, the non-volatile solid state memory unit is constructed with a storage class memory, such as phase change or magnetoresistive random access memory (‘MRAM’) that substitutes for DRAM and enables a reduced power hold-up apparatus.

One of many features of the storage nodes and non-volatile solid state storage is the ability to proactively rebuild data in a storage cluster. The storage nodes and non-volatile solid state storage can determine when a storage node or non-volatile solid state storage in the storage cluster is unreachable, independent of whether there is an attempt to read data involving that storage node or non-volatile solid state storage. The storage nodes and non-volatile solid state storage then cooperate to recover and rebuild the data in at least partially new locations. This constitutes a proactive rebuild, in that the system rebuilds data without waiting until the data is needed for a read access initiated from a client system employing the storage cluster. These and further details of the storage memory and operation thereof are discussed below.

FIG. 2A is a perspective view of a storage cluster 161, with multiple storage nodes 150 and internal solid-state memory coupled to each storage node to provide network attached storage or storage area network, in accordance with some embodiments. A network attached storage, storage area network, or a storage cluster, or other storage memory, could include one or more storage clusters 161, each having one or more storage nodes 150, in a flexible and reconfigurable arrangement of both the physical components and the amount of storage memory provided thereby. The storage cluster 161 is designed to fit in a rack, and one or more racks can be set up and populated as desired for the storage memory. The storage cluster 161 has a chassis 138 having multiple slots 142. It should be appreciated that chassis 138 may be referred to as a housing, enclosure, or rack unit. In one embodiment, the chassis 138 has fourteen slots 142, although other numbers of slots are readily devised. For example, some embodiments have four slots, eight slots, sixteen slots, thirty-two slots, or other suitable number of slots. Each slot 142 can accommodate one storage node 150 in some embodiments. Chassis 138 includes flaps 148 that can be utilized to mount the chassis 138 on a rack. Fans 144 provide air circulation for cooling of the storage nodes 150 and components thereof, although other cooling components could be used, or an embodiment could be devised without cooling components. A switch fabric 146 couples storage nodes 150 within chassis 138 together and to a network for communication to the memory. In an embodiment depicted in herein, the slots 142 to the left of the switch fabric 146 and fans 144 are shown occupied by storage nodes 150, while the slots 142 to the right of the switch fabric 146 and fans 144 are empty and available for insertion of storage node 150 for illustrative purposes. This configuration is one example, and one or more storage nodes 150 could occupy the slots 142 in various further arrangements. The storage node arrangements need not be sequential or adjacent in some embodiments. Storage nodes 150 are hot pluggable, meaning that a storage node 150 can be inserted into a slot 142 in the chassis 138, or removed from a slot 142, without stopping or powering down the system. Upon insertion or removal of storage node 150 from slot 142, the system automatically reconfigures in order to recognize and adapt to the change. Reconfiguration, in some embodiments, includes restoring redundancy and/or rebalancing data or load.

Each storage node 150 can have multiple components. In the embodiment shown here, the storage node 150 includes a printed circuit board 159 populated by a CPU 156, i.e., processor, a memory 154 coupled to the CPU 156, and a non-volatile solid state storage 152 coupled to the CPU 156, although other mountings and/or components could be used in further embodiments. The memory 154 has instructions which are executed by the CPU 156 and/or data operated on by the CPU 156. As further explained below, the non-volatile solid state storage 152 includes flash or, in further embodiments, other types of solid-state memory.

Referring to FIG. 2A, storage cluster 161 is scalable, meaning that storage capacity with non-uniform storage sizes is readily added, as described above. One or more storage nodes 150 can be plugged into or removed from each chassis and the storage cluster self-configures in some embodiments. Plug-in storage nodes 150, whether installed in a chassis as delivered or later added, can have different sizes. For example, in one embodiment a storage node 150 can have any multiple of 4 TB, e.g., 8 TB, 12 TB, 16 TB, 32 TB, etc. In further embodiments, a storage node 150 could have any multiple of other storage amounts or capacities. Storage capacity of each storage node 150 is broadcast, and influences decisions of how to stripe the data. For maximum storage efficiency, an embodiment can self-configure as wide as possible in the stripe, subject to a predetermined requirement of continued operation with loss of up to one, or up to two, non-volatile solid state storage units 152 or storage nodes 150 within the chassis.

FIG. 2B is a block diagram showing a communications interconnect 173 and power distribution bus 172 coupling multiple storage nodes 150. Referring back to FIG. 2A, the communications interconnect 173 can be included in or implemented with the switch fabric 146 in some embodiments. Where multiple storage clusters 161 occupy a rack, the communications interconnect 173 can be included in or implemented with a top of rack switch, in some embodiments. As illustrated in FIG. 2B, storage cluster 161 is enclosed within a single chassis 138. External port 176 is coupled to storage nodes 150 through communications interconnect 173, while external port 174 is coupled directly to a storage node. External power port 178 is coupled to power distribution bus 172. Storage nodes 150 may include varying amounts and differing capacities of non-volatile solid state storage 152 as described with reference to FIG. 2A. In addition, one or more storage nodes 150 may be a compute only storage node as illustrated in FIG. 2B. Authorities 168 are implemented on the non-volatile solid state storages 152, for example as lists or other data structures stored in memory. In some embodiments the authorities are stored within the non-volatile solid state storage 152 and supported by software executing on a controller or other processor of the non-volatile solid state storage 152. In a further embodiment, authorities 168 are implemented on the storage nodes 150, for example as lists or other data structures stored in the memory 154 and supported by software executing on the CPU 156 of the storage node 150. Authorities 168 control how and where data is stored in the non-volatile solid state storages 152 in some embodiments. This control assists in determining which type of erasure coding scheme is applied to the data, and which storage nodes 150 have which portions of the data. Each authority 168 may be assigned to a non-volatile solid state storage 152. Each authority may control a range of inode numbers, segment numbers, or other data identifiers which are assigned to data by a file system, by the storage nodes 150, or by the non-volatile solid state storage 152, in various embodiments.

Every piece of data, and every piece of metadata, has redundancy in the system in some embodiments. In addition, every piece of data and every piece of metadata has an owner, which may be referred to as an authority. If that authority is unreachable, for example through failure of a storage node, there is a plan of succession for how to find that data or that metadata. In various embodiments, there are redundant copies of authorities 168. Authorities 168 have a relationship to storage nodes 150 and non-volatile solid state storage 152 in some embodiments. Each authority 168, covering a range of data segment numbers or other identifiers of the data, may be assigned to a specific non-volatile solid state storage 152. In some embodiments the authorities 168 for all of such ranges are distributed over the non-volatile solid state storages 152 of a storage cluster. Each storage node 150 has a network port that provides access to the non-volatile solid state storage(s) 152 of that storage node 150. Data can be stored in a segment, which is associated with a segment number and that segment number is an indirection for a configuration of a RAID (redundant array of independent disks) stripe in some embodiments. The assignment and use of the authorities 168 thus establishes an indirection to data. Indirection may be referred to as the ability to reference data indirectly, in this case via an authority 168, in accordance with some embodiments. A segment identifies a set of non-volatile solid state storage 152 and a local identifier into the set of non-volatile solid state storage 152 that may contain data. In some embodiments, the local identifier is an offset into the device and may be reused sequentially by multiple segments. In other embodiments the local identifier is unique for a specific segment and never reused. The offsets in the non-volatile solid state storage 152 are applied to locating data for writing to or reading from the non-volatile solid state storage 152 (in the form of a RAID stripe). Data is striped across multiple units of non-volatile solid state storage 152, which may include or be different from the non-volatile solid state storage 152 having the authority 168 for a particular data segment.

If there is a change in where a particular segment of data is located, e.g., during a data move or a data reconstruction, the authority 168 for that data segment should be consulted, at that non-volatile solid state storage 152 or storage node 150 having that authority 168. In order to locate a particular piece of data, embodiments calculate a hash value for a data segment or apply an inode number or a data segment number. The output of this operation points to a non-volatile solid state storage 152 having the authority 168 for that particular piece of data. In some embodiments there are two stages to this operation. The first stage maps an entity identifier (ID), e.g., a segment number, inode number, or directory number to an authority identifier. This mapping may include a calculation such as a hash or a bit mask. The second stage is mapping the authority identifier to a particular non-volatile solid state storage 152, which may be done through an explicit mapping. The operation is repeatable, so that when the calculation is performed, the result of the calculation repeatably and reliably points to a particular non-volatile solid state storage 152 having that authority 168. The operation may include the set of reachable storage nodes as input. If the set of reachable non-volatile solid state storage units changes the optimal set changes. In some embodiments, the persisted value is the current assignment (which is always true) and the calculated value is the target assignment the cluster will attempt to reconfigure towards. This calculation may be used to determine the optimal non-volatile solid state storage 152 for an authority in the presence of a set of non-volatile solid state storage 152 that are reachable and constitute the same cluster. The calculation also determines an ordered set of peer non-volatile solid state storage 152 that will also record the authority to non-volatile solid state storage mapping so that the authority may be determined even if the assigned non-volatile solid state storage is unreachable. A duplicate or substitute authority 168 may be consulted if a specific authority 168 is unavailable in some embodiments.

With reference to FIGS. 2A and 2B, two of the many tasks of the CPU 156 on a storage node 150 are to break up write data, and reassemble read data. When the system has determined that data is to be written, the authority 168 for that data is located as above. When the segment ID for data is already determined the request to write is forwarded to the non-volatile solid state storage 152 currently determined to be the host of the authority 168 determined from the segment. The host CPU 156 of the storage node 150, on which the non-volatile solid state storage 152 and corresponding authority 168 reside, then breaks up or shards the data and transmits the data out to various non-volatile solid state storage 152. The transmitted data is written as a data stripe in accordance with an erasure coding scheme. In some embodiments, data is requested to be pulled, and in other embodiments, data is pushed. In reverse, when data is read, the authority 168 for the segment ID containing the data is located as described above. The host CPU 156 of the storage node 150 on which the non-volatile solid state storage 152 and corresponding authority 168 reside requests the data from the non-volatile solid state storage and corresponding storage nodes pointed to by the authority. In some embodiments the data is read from flash storage as a data stripe. The host CPU 156 of storage node 150 then reassembles the read data, correcting any errors (if present) according to the appropriate erasure coding scheme, and forwards the reassembled data to the network. In further embodiments, some or all of these tasks can be handled in the non-volatile solid state storage 152. In some embodiments, the segment host requests the data be sent to storage node 150 by requesting pages from storage and then sending the data to the storage node making the original request.

In embodiments, authorities 168 operate to determine how operations will proceed against particular logical elements. Each of the logical elements may be operated on through a particular authority across a plurality of storage controllers of a storage system. The authorities 168 may communicate with the plurality of storage controllers so that the plurality of storage controllers collectively perform operations against those particular logical elements.

In embodiments, logical elements could be, for example, files, directories, object buckets, individual objects, delineated parts of files or objects, other forms of key-value pair databases, or tables. In embodiments, performing an operation can involve, for example, ensuring consistency, structural integrity, and/or recoverability with other operations against the same logical element, reading metadata and data associated with that logical element, determining what data should be written durably into the storage system to persist any changes for the operation, or where metadata and data can be determined to be stored across modular storage devices attached to a plurality of the storage controllers in the storage system.

In some embodiments the operations are token based transactions to efficiently communicate within a distributed system. Each transaction may be accompanied by or associated with a token, which gives permission to execute the transaction. The authorities 168 are able to maintain a pre-transaction state of the system until completion of the operation in some embodiments. The token based communication may be accomplished without a global lock across the system, and also enables restart of an operation in case of a disruption or other failure.

In some systems, for example in UNIX-style file systems, data is handled with an index node or inode, which specifies a data structure that represents an object in a file system. The object could be a file or a directory, for example. Metadata may accompany the object, as attributes such as permission data and a creation timestamp, among other attributes. A segment number could be assigned to all or a portion of such an object in a file system. In other systems, data segments are handled with a segment number assigned elsewhere. For purposes of discussion, the unit of distribution is an entity, and an entity can be a file, a directory or a segment. That is, entities are units of data or metadata stored by a storage system. Entities are grouped into sets called authorities. Each authority has an authority owner, which is a storage node that has the exclusive right to update the entities in the authority. In other words, a storage node contains the authority, and that the authority, in turn, contains entities.

A segment is a logical container of data in accordance with some embodiments. A segment is an address space between medium address space and physical flash locations, i.e., the data segment number, are in this address space. Segments may also contain meta-data, which enable data redundancy to be restored (rewritten to different flash locations or devices) without the involvement of higher level software. In one embodiment, an internal format of a segment contains client data and medium mappings to determine the position of that data. Each data segment is protected, e.g., from memory and other failures, by breaking the segment into a number of data and parity shards, where applicable. The data and parity shards are distributed, i.e., striped, across non-volatile solid state storage 152 coupled to the host CPUs 156 (See FIGS. 2E and 2G) in accordance with an erasure coding scheme. Usage of the term segments refers to the container and its place in the address space of segments in some embodiments. Usage of the term stripe refers to the same set of shards as a segment and includes how the shards are distributed along with redundancy or parity information in accordance with some embodiments.

A series of address-space transformations takes place across an entire storage system. At the top are the directory entries (file names) which link to an inode. Modes point into medium address space, where data is logically stored. Medium addresses may be mapped through a series of indirect mediums to spread the load of large files, or implement data services like deduplication or snapshots. Medium addresses may be mapped through a series of indirect mediums to spread the load of large files, or implement data services like deduplication or snapshots. Segment addresses are then translated into physical flash locations. Physical flash locations have an address range bounded by the amount of flash in the system in accordance with some embodiments. Medium addresses and segment addresses are logical containers, and in some embodiments use a 128 bit or larger identifier so as to be practically infinite, with a likelihood of reuse calculated as longer than the expected life of the system. Addresses from logical containers are allocated in a hierarchical fashion in some embodiments. Initially, each non-volatile solid state storage unit 152 may be assigned a range of address space. Within this assigned range, the non-volatile solid state storage 152 is able to allocate addresses without synchronization with other non-volatile solid state storage 152.

Data and metadata is stored by a set of underlying storage layouts that are optimized for varying workload patterns and storage devices. These layouts incorporate multiple redundancy schemes, compression formats and index algorithms. Some of these layouts store information about authorities and authority masters, while others store file metadata and file data. The redundancy schemes include error correction codes that tolerate corrupted bits within a single storage device (such as a NAND flash chip), erasure codes that tolerate the failure of multiple storage nodes, and replication schemes that tolerate data center or regional failures. In some embodiments, low density parity check (‘LDPC’) code is used within a single storage unit. Reed-Solomon encoding is used within a storage cluster, and mirroring is used within a storage grid in some embodiments. Metadata may be stored using an ordered log structured index (such as a Log Structured Merge Tree), and large data may not be stored in a log structured layout.

In order to maintain consistency across multiple copies of an entity, the storage nodes agree implicitly on two things through calculations: (1) the authority that contains the entity, and (2) the storage node that contains the authority. The assignment of entities to authorities can be done by pseudo randomly assigning entities to authorities, by splitting entities into ranges based upon an externally produced key, or by placing a single entity into each authority. Examples of pseudorandom schemes are linear hashing and the Replication Under Scalable Hashing (‘RUSH’) family of hashes, including Controlled Replication Under Scalable Hashing (‘CRUSH’). In some embodiments, pseudo-random assignment is utilized only for assigning authorities to nodes because the set of nodes can change. The set of authorities cannot change so any subjective function may be applied in these embodiments. Some placement schemes automatically place authorities on storage nodes, while other placement schemes rely on an explicit mapping of authorities to storage nodes. In some embodiments, a pseudorandom scheme is utilized to map from each authority to a set of candidate authority owners. A pseudorandom data distribution function related to CRUSH may assign authorities to storage nodes and create a list of where the authorities are assigned. Each storage node has a copy of the pseudorandom data distribution function, and can arrive at the same calculation for distributing, and later finding or locating an authority. Each of the pseudorandom schemes requires the reachable set of storage nodes as input in some embodiments in order to conclude the same target nodes. Once an entity has been placed in an authority, the entity may be stored on physical devices so that no expected failure will lead to unexpected data loss. In some embodiments, rebalancing algorithms attempt to store the copies of all entities within an authority in the same layout and on the same set of machines.

Examples of expected failures include device failures, stolen machines, datacenter fires, and regional disasters, such as nuclear or geological events. Different failures lead to different levels of acceptable data loss. In some embodiments, a stolen storage node impacts neither the security nor the reliability of the system, while depending on system configuration, a regional event could lead to no loss of data, a few seconds or minutes of lost updates, or even complete data loss.

In the embodiments, the placement of data for storage redundancy is independent of the placement of authorities for data consistency. In some embodiments, storage nodes that contain authorities do not contain any persistent storage. Instead, the storage nodes are connected to non-volatile solid state storage units that do not contain authorities. The communications interconnect between storage nodes and non-volatile solid state storage units consists of multiple communication technologies and has non-uniform performance and fault tolerance characteristics. In some embodiments, as mentioned above, non-volatile solid state storage units are connected to storage nodes via PCI express, storage nodes are connected together within a single chassis using Ethernet backplane, and chassis are connected together to form a storage cluster. Storage clusters are connected to clients using Ethernet or fiber channel in some embodiments. If multiple storage clusters are configured into a storage grid, the multiple storage clusters are connected using the Internet or other long-distance networking links, such as a “metro scale” link or private link that does not traverse the internet.

Authority owners have the exclusive right to modify entities, to migrate entities from one non-volatile solid state storage unit to another non-volatile solid state storage unit, and to add and remove copies of entities. This allows for maintaining the redundancy of the underlying data. When an authority owner fails, is going to be decommissioned, or is overloaded, the authority is transferred to a new storage node. Transient failures make it non-trivial to ensure that all non-faulty machines agree upon the new authority location. The ambiguity that arises due to transient failures can be achieved automatically by a consensus protocol such as Paxos, hot-warm failover schemes, via manual intervention by a remote system administrator, or by a local hardware administrator (such as by physically removing the failed machine from the cluster, or pressing a button on the failed machine). In some embodiments, a consensus protocol is used, and failover is automatic. If too many failures or replication events occur in too short a time period, the system goes into a self-preservation mode and halts replication and data movement activities until an administrator intervenes in accordance with some embodiments.

As authorities are transferred between storage nodes and authority owners update entities in their authorities, the system transfers messages between the storage nodes and non-volatile solid state storage units. With regard to persistent messages, messages that have different purposes are of different types. Depending on the type of the message, the system maintains different ordering and durability guarantees. As the persistent messages are being processed, the messages are temporarily stored in multiple durable and non-durable storage hardware technologies. In some embodiments, messages are stored in RAM, NVRAM and on NAND flash devices, and a variety of protocols are used in order to make efficient use of each storage medium. Latency-sensitive client requests may be persisted in replicated NVRAM, and then later NAND, while background rebalancing operations are persisted directly to NAND.

Persistent messages are persistently stored prior to being transmitted. This allows the system to continue to serve client requests despite failures and component replacement. Although many hardware components contain unique identifiers that are visible to system administrators, manufacturer, hardware supply chain and ongoing monitoring quality control infrastructure, applications running on top of the infrastructure address virtualize addresses. These virtualized addresses do not change over the lifetime of the storage system, regardless of component failures and replacements. This allows each component of the storage system to be replaced over time without reconfiguration or disruptions of client request processing, i.e., the system supports non-disruptive upgrades.

In some embodiments, the virtualized addresses are stored with sufficient redundancy. A continuous monitoring system correlates hardware and software status and the hardware identifiers. This allows detection and prediction of failures due to faulty components and manufacturing details. The monitoring system also enables the proactive transfer of authorities and entities away from impacted devices before failure occurs by removing the component from the critical path in some embodiments.

FIG. 2C is a multiple level block diagram, showing contents of a storage node 150 and contents of a non-volatile solid state storage 152 of the storage node 150. Data is communicated to and from the storage node 150 by a network interface controller (‘NIC’) 202 in some embodiments. Each storage node 150 has a CPU 156, and one or more non-volatile solid state storage 152, as discussed above. Moving down one level in FIG. 2C, each non-volatile solid state storage 152 has a relatively fast non-volatile solid state memory, such as nonvolatile random access memory (‘NVRAM’) 204, and flash memory 206. In some embodiments, NVRAM 204 may be a component that does not require program/erase cycles (DRAM, MRAM, PCM), and can be a memory that can support being written vastly more often than the memory is read from. Moving down another level in FIG. 2C, the NVRAM 204 is implemented in one embodiment as high speed volatile memory, such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM) 216, backed up by energy reserve 218. Energy reserve 218 provides sufficient electrical power to keep the DRAM 216 powered long enough for contents to be transferred to the flash memory 206 in the event of power failure. In some embodiments, energy reserve 218 is a capacitor, super-capacitor, battery, or other device, that supplies a suitable supply of energy sufficient to enable the transfer of the contents of DRAM 216 to a stable storage medium in the case of power loss. The flash memory 206 is implemented as multiple flash dies 222, which may be referred to as packages of flash dies 222 or an array of flash dies 222. It should be appreciated that the flash dies 222 could be packaged in any number of ways, with a single die per package, multiple dies per package (i.e. multichip packages), in hybrid packages, as bare dies on a printed circuit board or other substrate, as encapsulated dies, etc. In the embodiment shown, the non-volatile solid state storage 152 has a controller 212 or other processor, and an input output (I/O) port 210 coupled to the controller 212. I/O port 210 is coupled to the CPU 156 and/or the network interface controller 202 of the flash storage node 150. Flash input output (I/O) port 220 is coupled to the flash dies 222, and a direct memory access unit (DMA) 214 is coupled to the controller 212, the DRAM 216 and the flash dies 222. In the embodiment shown, the I/O port 210, controller 212, DMA unit 214 and flash I/O port 220 are implemented on a programmable logic device (‘PLD’) 208, e.g., an FPGA. In this embodiment, each flash die 222 has pages, organized as sixteen kB (kilobyte) pages 224, and a register 226 through which data can be written to or read from the flash die 222. In further embodiments, other types of solid-state memory are used in place of, or in addition to flash memory illustrated within flash die 222.

Storage clusters 161, in various embodiments as disclosed herein, can be contrasted with storage arrays in general. The storage nodes 150 are part of a collection that creates the storage cluster 161. Each storage node 150 owns a slice of data and computing required to provide the data. Multiple storage nodes 150 cooperate to store and retrieve the data. Storage memory or storage devices, as used in storage arrays in general, are less involved with processing and manipulating the data. Storage memory or storage devices in a storage array receive commands to read, write, or erase data. The storage memory or storage devices in a storage array are not aware of a larger system in which they are embedded, or what the data means. Storage memory or storage devices in storage arrays can include various types of storage memory, such as RAM, solid state drives, hard disk drives, etc. The storage units 152 described herein have multiple interfaces active simultaneously and serving multiple purposes. In some embodiments, some of the functionality of a storage node 150 is shifted into a storage unit 152, transforming the storage unit 152 into a combination of storage unit 152 and storage node 150. Placing computing (relative to storage data) into the storage unit 152 places this computing closer to the data itself. The various system embodiments have a hierarchy of storage node layers with different capabilities. By contrast, in a storage array, a controller owns and knows everything about all of the data that the controller manages in a shelf or storage devices. In a storage cluster 161, as described herein, multiple controllers in multiple storage units 152 and/or storage nodes 150 cooperate in various ways (e.g., for erasure coding, data sharding, metadata communication and redundancy, storage capacity expansion or contraction, data recovery, and so on).

FIG. 2D shows a storage server environment, which uses embodiments of the storage nodes 150 and storage units 152 of FIGS. 2A-C. In this version, each storage unit 152 has a processor such as controller 212 (see FIG. 2C), an FPGA, flash memory 206, and NVRAM 204 (which is super-capacitor backed DRAM 216, see FIGS. 2B and 2C) on a PCIe (peripheral component interconnect express) board in a chassis 138 (see FIG. 2A). The storage unit 152 may be implemented as a single board containing storage, and may be the largest tolerable failure domain inside the chassis. In some embodiments, up to two storage units 152 may fail and the device will continue with no data loss.

The physical storage is divided into named regions based on application usage in some embodiments. The NVRAM 204 is a contiguous block of reserved memory in the storage unit 152 DRAM 216, and is backed by NAND flash. NVRAM 204 is logically divided into multiple memory regions written for two as spool (e.g., spool region). Space within the NVRAM 204 spools is managed by each authority 168 independently. Each device provides an amount of storage space to each authority 168. That authority 168 further manages lifetimes and allocations within that space. Examples of a spool include distributed transactions or notions. When the primary power to a storage unit 152 fails, onboard super-capacitors provide a short duration of power hold up. During this holdup interval, the contents of the NVRAM 204 are flushed to flash memory 206. On the next power-on, the contents of the NVRAM 204 are recovered from the flash memory 206.

As for the storage unit controller, the responsibility of the logical “controller” is distributed across each of the blades containing authorities 168. This distribution of logical control is shown in FIG. 2D as a host controller 242, mid-tier controller 244 and storage unit controller(s) 246. Management of the control plane and the storage plane are treated independently, although parts may be physically co-located on the same blade. Each authority 168 effectively serves as an independent controller. Each authority 168 provides its own data and metadata structures, its own background workers, and maintains its own lifecycle.

FIG. 2E is a blade 252 hardware block diagram, showing a control plane 254, compute and storage planes 256, 258, and authorities 168 interacting with underlying physical resources, using embodiments of the storage nodes 150 and storage units 152 of FIGS. 2A-C in the storage server environment of FIG. 2D. The control plane 254 is partitioned into a number of authorities 168 which can use the compute resources in the compute plane 256 to run on any of the blades 252. The storage plane 258 is partitioned into a set of devices, each of which provides access to flash 206 and NVRAM 204 resources. In one embodiment, the compute plane 256 may perform the operations of a storage array controller, as described herein, on one or more devices of the storage plane 258 (e.g., a storage array).

In the compute and storage planes 256, 258 of FIG. 2E, the authorities 168 interact with the underlying physical resources (i.e., devices). From the point of view of an authority 168, its resources are striped over all of the physical devices. From the point of view of a device, it provides resources to all authorities 168, irrespective of where the authorities happen to run. Each authority 168 has allocated or has been allocated one or more partitions 260 of storage memory in the storage units 152, e.g. partitions 260 in flash memory 206 and NVRAM 204. Each authority 168 uses those allocated partitions 260 that belong to it, for writing or reading user data. Authorities can be associated with differing amounts of physical storage of the system. For example, one authority 168 could have a larger number of partitions 260 or larger sized partitions 260 in one or more storage units 152 than one or more other authorities 168.

FIG. 2F depicts elasticity software layers in blades 252 of a storage cluster, in accordance with some embodiments. In the elasticity structure, elasticity software is symmetric, i.e., each blade's compute module 270 runs the three identical layers of processes depicted in FIG. 2F. Storage managers 274 execute read and write requests from other blades 252 for data and metadata stored in local storage unit 152 NVRAM 204 and flash 206. Authorities 168 fulfill client requests by issuing the necessary reads and writes to the blades 252 on whose storage units 152 the corresponding data or metadata resides. Endpoints 272 parse client connection requests received from switch fabric 146 supervisory software, relay the client connection requests to the authorities 168 responsible for fulfillment, and relay the authorities' 168 responses to clients. The symmetric three-layer structure enables the storage system's high degree of concurrency. Elasticity scales out efficiently and reliably in these embodiments. In addition, elasticity implements a unique scale-out technique that balances work evenly across all resources regardless of client access pattern, and maximizes concurrency by eliminating much of the need for inter-blade coordination that typically occurs with conventional distributed locking.

Still referring to FIG. 2F, authorities 168 running in the compute modules 270 of a blade 252 perform the internal operations required to fulfill client requests. One feature of elasticity is that authorities 168 are stateless, i.e., they cache active data and metadata in their own blades' 252 DRAMs for fast access, but the authorities store every update in their NVRAM 204 partitions on three separate blades 252 until the update has been written to flash 206. All the storage system writes to NVRAM 204 are in triplicate to partitions on three separate blades 252 in some embodiments. With triple-mirrored NVRAM 204 and persistent storage protected by parity and Reed-Solomon RAID checksums, the storage system can survive concurrent failure of two blades 252 with no loss of data, metadata, or access to either.

Because authorities 168 are stateless, they can migrate between blades 252. Each authority 168 has a unique identifier. NVRAM 204 and flash 206 partitions are associated with authorities' 168 identifiers, not with the blades 252 on which they are running in some. Thus, when an authority 168 migrates, the authority 168 continues to manage the same storage partitions from its new location. When a new blade 252 is installed in an embodiment of the storage cluster, the system automatically rebalances load by: partitioning the new blade's 252 storage for use by the system's authorities 168, migrating selected authorities 168 to the new blade 252, starting endpoints 272 on the new blade 252 and including them in the switch fabric's 146 client connection distribution algorithm.

From their new locations, migrated authorities 168 persist the contents of their NVRAM 204 partitions on flash 206, process read and write requests from other authorities 168, and fulfill the client requests that endpoints 272 direct to them. Similarly, if a blade 252 fails or is removed, the system redistributes its authorities 168 among the system's remaining blades 252. The redistributed authorities 168 continue to perform their original functions from their new locations.

FIG. 2G depicts authorities 168 and storage resources in blades 252 of a storage cluster, in accordance with some embodiments. Each authority 168 is exclusively responsible for a partition of the flash 206 and NVRAM 204 on each blade 252. The authority 168 manages the content and integrity of its partitions independently of other authorities 168. Authorities 168 compress incoming data and preserve it temporarily in their NVRAM 204 partitions, and then consolidate, RAID-protect, and persist the data in segments of the storage in their flash 206 partitions. As the authorities 168 write data to flash 206, storage managers 274 perform the necessary flash translation to optimize write performance and maximize media longevity. In the background, authorities 168 “garbage collect,” or reclaim space occupied by data that clients have made obsolete by overwriting the data. It should be appreciated that since authorities' 168 partitions are disjoint, there is no need for distributed locking to execute client and writes or to perform background functions.

The embodiments described herein may utilize various software, communication and/or networking protocols. In addition, the configuration of the hardware and/or software may be adjusted to accommodate various protocols. For example, the embodiments may utilize Active Directory, which is a database based system that provides authentication, directory, policy, and other services in a WINDOWS' environment. In these embodiments, LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is one example application protocol for querying and modifying items in directory service providers such as Active Directory. In some embodiments, a network lock manager (‘NLM’) is utilized as a facility that works in cooperation with the Network File System (‘NFS’) to provide a System V style of advisory file and record locking over a network. The Server Message Block (‘SMB’) protocol, one version of which is also known as Common Internet File System (‘CIFS’), may be integrated with the storage systems discussed herein. SMP operates as an application-layer network protocol typically used for providing shared access to files, printers, and serial ports and miscellaneous communications between nodes on a network. SMB also provides an authenticated inter-process communication mechanism. AMAZON™ S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a web service offered by Amazon Web Services, and the systems described herein may interface with Amazon S3 through web services interfaces (REST (representational state transfer), SOAP (simple object access protocol), and BitTorrent). A RESTful API (application programming interface) breaks down a transaction to create a series of small modules. Each module addresses a particular underlying part of the transaction. The control or permissions provided with these embodiments, especially for object data, may include utilization of an access control list (‘ACL’). The ACL is a list of permissions attached to an object and the ACL specifies which users or system processes are granted access to objects, as well as what operations are allowed on given objects. The systems may utilize Internet Protocol version 6 (‘IPv6’), as well as IPv4, for the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. The routing of packets between networked systems may include Equal-cost multi-path routing (‘ECMP’), which is a routing strategy where next-hop packet forwarding to a single destination can occur over multiple “best paths” which tie for top place in routing metric calculations. Multi-path routing can be used in conjunction with most routing protocols, because it is a per-hop decision limited to a single router. The software may support Multi-tenancy, which is an architecture in which a single instance of a software application serves multiple customers. Each customer may be referred to as a tenant. Tenants may be given the ability to customize some parts of the application, but may not customize the application's code, in some embodiments. The embodiments may maintain audit logs. An audit log is a document that records an event in a computing system. In addition to documenting what resources were accessed, audit log entries typically include destination and source addresses, a timestamp, and user login information for compliance with various regulations. The embodiments may support various key management policies, such as encryption key rotation. In addition, the system may support dynamic root passwords or some variation dynamically changing passwords.

FIG. 3A sets forth a diagram of a storage system 306 that is coupled for data communications with a cloud services provider 302 in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. Although depicted in less detail, the storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3A may be similar to the storage systems described above with reference to FIGS. 1A-1D and FIGS. 2A-2G. In some embodiments, the storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3A may be embodied as a storage system that includes imbalanced active/active controllers, as a storage system that includes balanced active/active controllers, as a storage system that includes active/active controllers where less than all of each controller's resources are utilized such that each controller has reserve resources that may be used to support failover, as a storage system that includes fully active/active controllers, as a storage system that includes dataset-segregated controllers, as a storage system that includes dual-layer architectures with front-end controllers and back-end integrated storage controllers, as a storage system that includes scale-out clusters of dual-controller arrays, as well as combinations of such embodiments.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3A, the storage system 306 is coupled to the cloud services provider 302 via a data communications link 304. The data communications link 304 may be embodied as a dedicated data communications link, as a data communications pathway that is provided through the use of one or data communications networks such as a wide area network (‘WAN’) or LAN, or as some other mechanism capable of transporting digital information between the storage system 306 and the cloud services provider 302. Such a data communications link 304 may be fully wired, fully wireless, or some aggregation of wired and wireless data communications pathways. In such an example, digital information may be exchanged between the storage system 306 and the cloud services provider 302 via the data communications link 304 using one or more data communications protocols. For example, digital information may be exchanged between the storage system 306 and the cloud services provider 302 via the data communications link 304 using the handheld device transfer protocol (‘HDTP’), hypertext transfer protocol (‘HTTP’), internet protocol (‘IP’), real-time transfer protocol (‘RTP’), transmission control protocol (‘TCP’), user datagram protocol (‘UDP’), wireless application protocol (‘WAP’), or other protocol.

The cloud services provider 302 depicted in FIG. 3A may be embodied, for example, as a system and computing environment that provides a vast array of services to users of the cloud services provider 302 through the sharing of computing resources via the data communications link 304. The cloud services provider 302 may provide on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources such as computer networks, servers, storage, applications and services, and so on. The shared pool of configurable resources may be rapidly provisioned and released to a user of the cloud services provider 302 with minimal management effort. Generally, the user of the cloud services provider 302 is unaware of the exact computing resources utilized by the cloud services provider 302 to provide the services. Although in many cases such a cloud services provider 302 may be accessible via the Internet, readers of skill in the art will recognize that any system that abstracts the use of shared resources to provide services to a user through any data communications link may be considered a cloud services provider 302.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3A, the cloud services provider 302 may be configured to provide a variety of services to the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306 through the implementation of various service models. For example, the cloud services provider 302 may be configured to provide services through the implementation of an infrastructure as a service (‘IaaS’) service model, through the implementation of a platform as a service (‘PaaS’) service model, through the implementation of a software as a service (‘SaaS’) service model, through the implementation of an authentication as a service (‘AaaS’) service model, through the implementation of a storage as a service model where the cloud services provider 302 offers access to its storage infrastructure for use by the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306, and so on. Readers will appreciate that the cloud services provider 302 may be configured to provide additional services to the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306 through the implementation of additional service models, as the service models described above are included only for explanatory purposes and in no way represent a limitation of the services that may be offered by the cloud services provider 302 or a limitation as to the service models that may be implemented by the cloud services provider 302.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3A, the cloud services provider 302 may be embodied, for example, as a private cloud, as a public cloud, or as a combination of a private cloud and public cloud. In an embodiment in which the cloud services provider 302 is embodied as a private cloud, the cloud services provider 302 may be dedicated to providing services to a single organization rather than providing services to multiple organizations. In an embodiment where the cloud services provider 302 is embodied as a public cloud, the cloud services provider 302 may provide services to multiple organizations. In still alternative embodiments, the cloud services provider 302 may be embodied as a mix of a private and public cloud services with a hybrid cloud deployment.

Although not explicitly depicted in FIG. 3A, readers will appreciate that a vast amount of additional hardware components and additional software components may be necessary to facilitate the delivery of cloud services to the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306. For example, the storage system 306 may be coupled to (or even include) a cloud storage gateway. Such a cloud storage gateway may be embodied, for example, as hardware-based or software-based appliance that is located on premise with the storage system 306. Such a cloud storage gateway may operate as a bridge between local applications that are executing on the storage array 306 and remote, cloud-based storage that is utilized by the storage array 306. Through the use of a cloud storage gateway, organizations may move primary iSCSI or NAS to the cloud services provider 302, thereby enabling the organization to save space on their on-premises storage systems. Such a cloud storage gateway may be configured to emulate a disk array, a block-based device, a file server, or other storage system that can translate the SCSI commands, file server commands, or other appropriate command into REST-space protocols that facilitate communications with the cloud services provider 302.

In order to enable the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306 to make use of the services provided by the cloud services provider 302, a cloud migration process may take place during which data, applications, or other elements from an organization's local systems (or even from another cloud environment) are moved to the cloud services provider 302. In order to successfully migrate data, applications, or other elements to the cloud services provider's 302 environment, middleware such as a cloud migration tool may be utilized to bridge gaps between the cloud services provider's 302 environment and an organization's environment. Such cloud migration tools may also be configured to address potentially high network costs and long transfer times associated with migrating large volumes of data to the cloud services provider 302, as well as addressing security concerns associated with sensitive data to the cloud services provider 302 over data communications networks. In order to further enable the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306 to make use of the services provided by the cloud services provider 302, a cloud orchestrator may also be used to arrange and coordinate automated tasks in pursuit of creating a consolidated process or workflow. Such a cloud orchestrator may perform tasks such as configuring various components, whether those components are cloud components or on-premises components, as well as managing the interconnections between such components. The cloud orchestrator can simplify the inter-component communication and connections to ensure that links are correctly configured and maintained.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3A, and as described briefly above, the cloud services provider 302 may be configured to provide services to the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306 through the usage of a SaaS service model, eliminating the need to install and run the application on local computers, which may simplify maintenance and support of the application. Such applications may take many forms in accordance with various embodiments of the present disclosure. For example, the cloud services provider 302 may be configured to provide access to data analytics applications to the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306. Such data analytics applications may be configured, for example, to receive vast amounts of telemetry data phoned home by the storage system 306. Such telemetry data may describe various operating characteristics of the storage system 306 and may be analyzed for a vast array of purposes including, for example, to determine the health of the storage system 306, to identify workloads that are executing on the storage system 306, to predict when the storage system 306 will run out of various resources, to recommend configuration changes, hardware or software upgrades, workflow migrations, or other actions that may improve the operation of the storage system 306.

The cloud services provider 302 may also be configured to provide access to virtualized computing environments to the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306. Such virtualized computing environments may be embodied, for example, as a virtual machine or other virtualized computer hardware platforms, virtual storage devices, virtualized computer network resources, and so on. Examples of such virtualized environments can include virtual machines that are created to emulate an actual computer, virtualized desktop environments that separate a logical desktop from a physical machine, virtualized file systems that allow uniform access to different types of concrete file systems, and many others.

Although the example depicted in FIG. 3A illustrates the storage system 306 being coupled for data communications with the cloud services provider 302, in other embodiments the storage system 306 may be part of a hybrid cloud deployment in which private cloud elements (e.g., private cloud services, on-premises infrastructure, and so on) and public cloud elements (e.g., public cloud services, infrastructure, and so on that may be provided by one or more cloud services providers) are combined to form a single solution, with orchestration among the various platforms. Such a hybrid cloud deployment may leverage hybrid cloud management software such as, for example, Azure™ Arc from Microsoft™, that centralize the management of the hybrid cloud deployment to any infrastructure and enable the deployment of services anywhere. In such an example, the hybrid cloud management software may be configured to create, update, and delete resources (both physical and virtual) that form the hybrid cloud deployment, to allocate compute and storage to specific workloads, to monitor workloads and resources for performance, policy compliance, updates and patches, security status, or to perform a variety of other tasks.

Readers will appreciate that by pairing the storage systems described herein with one or more cloud services providers, various offerings may be enabled. For example, disaster recovery as a service (‘DRaaS’) may be provided where cloud resources are utilized to protect applications and data from disruption caused by disaster, including in embodiments where the storage systems may serve as the primary data store. In such embodiments, a total system backup may be taken that allows for business continuity in the event of system failure. In such embodiments, cloud data backup techniques (by themselves or as part of a larger DRaaS solution) may also be integrated into an overall solution that includes the storage systems and cloud services providers described herein.

The storage systems described herein, as well as the cloud services providers, may be utilized to provide a wide array of security features. For example, the storage systems may encrypt data at rest (and data may be sent to and from the storage systems encrypted) and may make use of Key Management-as-a-Service (‘KMaaS’) to manage encryption keys, keys for locking and unlocking storage devices, and so on. Likewise, cloud data security gateways or similar mechanisms may be utilized to ensure that data stored within the storage systems does not improperly end up being stored in the cloud as part of a cloud data backup operation. Furthermore, microsegmentation or identity-based-segmentation may be utilized in a data center that includes the storage systems or within the cloud services provider, to create secure zones in data centers and cloud deployments that enables the isolation of workloads from one another.

For further explanation, FIG. 3B sets forth a diagram of a storage system 306 in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. Although depicted in less detail, the storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B may be similar to the storage systems described above with reference to FIGS. 1A-1D and FIGS. 2A-2G as the storage system may include many of the components described above.

The storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B may include a vast amount of storage resources 308, which may be embodied in many forms. For example, the storage resources 308 can include nano-RAM or another form of nonvolatile random access memory that utilizes carbon nanotubes deposited on a substrate, 3D crosspoint non-volatile memory, flash memory including single-level cell (‘SLC’) NAND flash, multi-level cell (‘MLC’) NAND flash, triple-level cell (‘TLC’) NAND flash, quad-level cell (‘QLC’) NAND flash, or others. Likewise, the storage resources 308 may include non-volatile magnetoresistive random-access memory (‘MRAM’), including spin transfer torque (‘STT’) MRAM. The example storage resources 308 may alternatively include non-volatile phase-change memory (‘PCM’), quantum memory that allows for the storage and retrieval of photonic quantum information, resistive random-access memory (‘ReRAM’), storage class memory (‘SCM’), or other form of storage resources, including any combination of resources described herein. Readers will appreciate that other forms of computer memories and storage devices may be utilized by the storage systems described above, including DRAM, SRAM, EEPROM, universal memory, and many others. The storage resources 308 depicted in FIG. 3A may be embodied in a variety of form factors, including but not limited to, dual in-line memory modules (‘DIMMs’), non-volatile dual in-line memory modules (‘NVDIMMs’), M.2, U.2, and others.

The storage resources 308 depicted in FIG. 3B may include various forms of SCM. SCM may effectively treat fast, non-volatile memory (e.g., NAND flash) as an extension of DRAM such that an entire dataset may be treated as an in-memory dataset that resides entirely in DRAM. SCM may include non-volatile media such as, for example, NAND flash. Such NAND flash may be accessed utilizing NVMe that can use the PCIe bus as its transport, providing for relatively low access latencies compared to older protocols. In fact, the network protocols used for SSDs in all-flash arrays can include NVMe using Ethernet (ROCE, NVME TCP), Fibre Channel (NVMe FC), InfiniBand (iWARP), and others that make it possible to treat fast, non-volatile memory as an extension of DRAM. In view of the fact that DRAM is often byte-addressable and fast, non-volatile memory such as NAND flash is block-addressable, a controller software/hardware stack may be needed to convert the block data to the bytes that are stored in the media. Examples of media and software that may be used as SCM can include, for example, 3D XPoint, Intel Memory Drive Technology, Samsung's Z-SSD, and others.

The storage resources 308 depicted in FIG. 3B may also include racetrack memory (also referred to as domain-wall memory). Such racetrack memory may be embodied as a form of non-volatile, solid-state memory that relies on the intrinsic strength and orientation of the magnetic field created by an electron as it spins in addition to its electronic charge, in solid-state devices. Through the use of spin-coherent electric current to move magnetic domains along a nanoscopic permalloy wire, the domains may pass by magnetic read/write heads positioned near the wire as current is passed through the wire, which alter the domains to record patterns of bits. In order to create a racetrack memory device, many such wires and read/write elements may be packaged together.

The example storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B may implement a variety of storage architectures. For example, storage systems in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure may utilize block storage where data is stored in blocks, and each block essentially acts as an individual hard drive. Storage systems in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure may utilize object storage, where data is managed as objects. Each object may include the data itself, a variable amount of metadata, and a globally unique identifier, where object storage can be implemented at multiple levels (e.g., device level, system level, interface level). Storage systems in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure utilize file storage in which data is stored in a hierarchical structure. Such data may be saved in files and folders, and presented to both the system storing it and the system retrieving it in the same format.

The example storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B may be embodied as a storage system in which additional storage resources can be added through the use of a scale-up model, additional storage resources can be added through the use of a scale-out model, or through some combination thereof. In a scale-up model, additional storage may be added by adding additional storage devices. In a scale-out model, however, additional storage nodes may be added to a cluster of storage nodes, where such storage nodes can include additional processing resources, additional networking resources, and so on.

The example storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B may leverage the storage resources described above in a variety of different ways. For example, some portion of the storage resources may be utilized to serve as a write cache where data is initially written to storage resources with relatively fast write latencies, relatively high write bandwidth, or similar characteristics. In such an example, data that is written to the storage resources that serve as a write cache may later be written to other storage resources that may be characterized by slower write latencies, lower write bandwidth, or similar characteristics than the storage resources that are utilized to serve as a write cache. In a similar manner, storage resources within the storage system may be utilized as a read cache, where the read cache is populated in accordance with a set of predetermined rules or heuristics. In other embodiments, tiering may be achieved within the storage systems by placing data within the storage system in accordance with one or more policies such that, for example, data that is accessed frequently is stored in faster storage tiers while data that is accessed infrequently is stored in slower storage tiers.

The storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B also includes communications resources 310 that may be useful in facilitating data communications between components within the storage system 306, as well as data communications between the storage system 306 and computing devices that are outside of the storage system 306, including embodiments where those resources are separated by a relatively vast expanse. The communications resources 310 may be configured to utilize a variety of different protocols and data communication fabrics to facilitate data communications between components within the storage systems as well as computing devices that are outside of the storage system. For example, the communications resources 310 can include fibre channel (‘FC’) technologies such as FC fabrics and FC protocols that can transport SCSI commands over FC network, FC over ethernet (‘FCoE’) technologies through which FC frames are encapsulated and transmitted over Ethernet networks, InfiniBand (‘IB’) technologies in which a switched fabric topology is utilized to facilitate transmissions between channel adapters, NVM Express (‘NVMe’) technologies and NVMe over fabrics (‘NVMeoF’) technologies through which non-volatile storage media attached via a PCI express (‘PCIe’) bus may be accessed, and others. In fact, the storage systems described above may, directly or indirectly, make use of neutrino communication technologies and devices through which information (including binary information) is transmitted using a beam of neutrinos.

The communications resources 310 can also include mechanisms for accessing storage resources 308 within the storage system 306 utilizing serial attached SCSI (‘SAS’), serial ATA (‘SATA’) bus interfaces for connecting storage resources 308 within the storage system 306 to host bus adapters within the storage system 306, internet small computer systems interface (‘iSCSI’) technologies to provide block-level access to storage resources 308 within the storage system 306, and other communications resources that that may be useful in facilitating data communications between components within the storage system 306, as well as data communications between the storage system 306 and computing devices that are outside of the storage system 306.

The storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B also includes processing resources 312 that may be useful in useful in executing computer program instructions and performing other computational tasks within the storage system 306. The processing resources 312 may include one or more ASICs that are customized for some particular purpose as well as one or more CPUs. The processing resources 312 may also include one or more DSPs, one or more FPGAs, one or more systems on a chip (‘SoCs’), or other form of processing resources 312. The storage system 306 may utilize the storage resources 312 to perform a variety of tasks including, but not limited to, supporting the execution of software resources 314 that will be described in greater detail below.

The storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B also includes software resources 314 that, when executed by processing resources 312 within the storage system 306, may perform a vast array of tasks. The software resources 314 may include, for example, one or more modules of computer program instructions that when executed by processing resources 312 within the storage system 306 are useful in carrying out various data protection techniques to preserve the integrity of data that is stored within the storage systems. Readers will appreciate that such data protection techniques may be carried out, for example, by system software executing on computer hardware within the storage system, by a cloud services provider, or in other ways. Such data protection techniques can include, for example, data archiving techniques that cause data that is no longer actively used to be moved to a separate storage device or separate storage system for long-term retention, data backup techniques through which data stored in the storage system may be copied and stored in a distinct location to avoid data loss in the event of equipment failure or some other form of catastrophe with the storage system, data replication techniques through which data stored in the storage system is replicated to another storage system such that the data may be accessible via multiple storage systems, data snapshotting techniques through which the state of data within the storage system is captured at various points in time, data and database cloning techniques through which duplicate copies of data and databases may be created, and other data protection techniques.

The software resources 314 may also include software that is useful in implementing software-defined storage (‘SDS’). In such an example, the software resources 314 may include one or more modules of computer program instructions that, when executed, are useful in policy-based provisioning and management of data storage that is independent of the underlying hardware. Such software resources 314 may be useful in implementing storage virtualization to separate the storage hardware from the software that manages the storage hardware.

The software resources 314 may also include software that is useful in facilitating and optimizing I/O operations that are directed to the storage resources 308 in the storage system 306. For example, the software resources 314 may include software modules that perform carry out various data reduction techniques such as, for example, data compression, data deduplication, and others. The software resources 314 may include software modules that intelligently group together I/O operations to facilitate better usage of the underlying storage resource 308, software modules that perform data migration operations to migrate from within a storage system, as well as software modules that perform other functions. Such software resources 314 may be embodied as one or more software containers or in many other ways.

For further explanation, the embodiments may be integrated into a cloud-based storage system. In this example, the cloud-based storage system is created entirely in a cloud computing environment such as, for example, Amazon Web Services (‘AWS’), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and others. The cloud-based storage system may be used to provide services similar to the services that may be provided by the storage systems described above. For example, the cloud-based storage system may be used to provide block storage services to users of the cloud-based storage system, the cloud-based storage system may be used to provide storage services to users of the cloud-based storage system through the use of solid-state storage, and so on.

The cloud-based storage system may include two cloud computing instances that each are used to support the execution of a storage controller application. The cloud computing instances may be embodied, for example, as instances of cloud computing resources (e.g., virtual machines) that may be provided by the cloud computing environment to support the execution of software applications such as the storage controller application. In one embodiment, the cloud computing instances may be embodied as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (‘EC2’) instances. In such an example, an Amazon Machine Image (‘AMI’) that includes a storage controller application may be booted to create and configure a virtual machine that may execute the storage controller application.

A storage controller application may be embodied as a module of computer program instructions that, when executed, carries out various storage tasks. For example, the storage controller application may be embodied as a module of computer program instructions that, when executed, carries out the same tasks as the controllers 110A, 110B in FIG. 1A described above such as writing data received from the users of the cloud-based storage system to the cloud-based storage system, erasing data from the cloud-based storage system, retrieving data from the cloud-based storage system and providing such data to users of the cloud-based storage system, monitoring and reporting of disk utilization and performance, performing redundancy operations, such as RAID or RAID-like data redundancy operations, compressing data, encrypting data, deduplicating data, and so forth. Readers will appreciate that there are two cloud computing instances each may include a storage controller application, in some embodiments one cloud computing instance may operate as the primary controller as described above while the other cloud computing instance may operate as the secondary controller as described above. Readers will appreciate that the storage controller application may include identical source code that is executed within different cloud computing instances.

Consider an example in which the cloud computing environment is embodied as AWS and the cloud computing instances are embodied as EC2 instances. In such an example, the cloud computing instance that operates as the primary controller may be deployed on one of the instance types that has a relatively large amount of memory and processing power while the cloud computing instance that operates as the secondary controller may be deployed on one of the instance types that has a relatively small amount of memory and processing power. In such an example, upon the occurrence of a failover event where the roles of primary and secondary are switched, a double failover may actually be carried out such that: 1) a first failover event where the cloud computing instance that formerly operated as the secondary controller begins to operate as the primary controller, and 2) a third cloud computing instance (not shown) that is of an instance type that has a relatively large amount of memory and processing power is spun up with a copy of the storage controller application, where the third cloud computing instance begins operating as the primary controller while the cloud computing instance that originally operated as the secondary controller begins operating as the secondary controller again. In such an example, the cloud computing instance that formerly operated as the primary controller may be terminated. Readers will appreciate that in alternative embodiments, the cloud computing instance that is operating as the secondary controller after the failover event may continue to operate as the secondary controller and the cloud computing instance that operated as the primary controller after the occurrence of the failover event may be terminated once the primary role has been assumed by the third cloud computing instance (not shown).

Readers will appreciate that while the embodiments described above relate to embodiments where one cloud computing instance operates as the primary controller and the second cloud computing instance operates as the secondary controller, other embodiments are within the scope of the present disclosure. For example, each cloud computing instance may operate as a primary controller for some portion of the address space supported by the cloud-based storage system, each cloud computing instance may operate as a primary controller where the servicing of I/O operations directed to the cloud-based storage system are divided in some other way, and so on. In fact, in other embodiments where costs savings may be prioritized over performance demands, only a single cloud computing instance may exist that contains the storage controller application.

The cloud-based storage system may include cloud computing instances with local storage. The cloud computing instances may be embodied, for example, as instances of cloud computing resources that may be provided by the cloud computing environment to support the execution of software applications. The cloud computing instances may-have local storage-resources. The cloud computing instances with local storage may be embodied, for example, as EC2 M5 instances that include one or more SSDs, as EC2 R5 instances that include one or more SSDs, as EC2 I3 instances that include one or more SSDs, and so on. In some embodiments, the local storage must be embodied as solid-state storage (e.g., SSDs) rather than storage that makes use of hard disk drives.

Each of the cloud computing instances with local storage can include a software daemon that, when executed by a cloud computing instance can present itself to the storage controller applications as if the cloud computing instance were a physical storage device (e.g., one or more SSDs). In such an example, the software daemon may include computer program instructions similar to those that would normally be contained on a storage device such that the storage controller applications can send and receive the same commands that a storage controller would send to storage devices. In such a way, the storage controller applications may include code that is identical to (or substantially identical to) the code that would be executed by the controllers in the storage systems described above. In these and similar embodiments, communications between the storage controller applications and the cloud computing instances with local storage may utilize iSCSI, NVMe over TCP, messaging, a custom protocol, or in some other mechanism.

Each of the cloud computing instances with local storage may also be coupled to block-storage that is offered by the cloud computing environment. The block-storage that is offered by the cloud computing environment may be embodied, for example, as Amazon Elastic Block Store (‘EBS’) volumes. For example, a first EBS volume may be coupled to a first cloud computing instance, a second EBS volume may be coupled to a second cloud computing instance, and a third EBS volume may be coupled to a third cloud computing instance. In such an example, the block-storage that is offered by the cloud computing environment.

may be utilized in a manner that is similar to how the NVRAM devices described above are utilized, as the software daemon (or some other module) that is executing within a particular cloud comping instance may, upon receiving a request to write data, initiate a write of the data to its attached EBS volume as well as a write of the data to its local storage resources. In some alternative embodiments, data may only be written to the local storage resources within a particular cloud comping instance. In an alternative embodiment, rather than using the block-storage that is offered by the cloud computing environment as NVRAM, actual RAM on each of the cloud computing instances with local storage may be used as NVRAM, thereby decreasing network utilization costs that would be associated with using an EBS volume as the NVRAM.

The cloud computing instances with local storage may be utilized, by cloud computing instances that support the execution of the storage controller application to service I/O operations that are directed to the cloud-based storage system. Consider an example in which a first cloud computing instance that is executing the storage controller application is operating as the primary controller. In such an example, the first cloud computing instance that is executing the storage controller application may receive (directly or indirectly via the secondary controller) requests to write data to the cloud-based storage system from users of the cloud-based storage system. In such an example, the first cloud computing instance that is executing the storage controller application may perform various tasks such as, for example, deduplicating the data contained in the request, compressing the data contained in the request, determining where to the write the data contained in the request, and so on, before ultimately sending a request to write a deduplicated, encrypted, or otherwise possibly updated version of the data to one or more of the cloud computing instances with local storage. Either cloud computing instance, in some embodiments, may receive a request to read data from the cloud-based storage system and may ultimately send a request to read data to one or more of the cloud computing instances with local storage.

Readers will appreciate that when a request to write data is received by a particular cloud computing instance with local storage the software daemon or some other module of computer program instructions that is executing on the particular cloud computing instance may be configured to not only write the data to its own local storage resources and any appropriate block-storage that are offered by the cloud computing environment, but the software daemon or some other module of computer program instructions that is executing on the particular cloud computing instance may also be configured to write the data to cloud-based object storage that is attached to the particular cloud computing instance. The cloud-based object storage that is attached to the particular cloud computing instance may be embodied, for example, as Amazon Simple Storage Service (‘S3’) storage that is accessible by the particular cloud computing instance. In other embodiments, the cloud computing instances that each include the storage controller application may initiate the storage of the data in the local storage of the cloud computing instances and the cloud-based object storage.

Readers will appreciate that, as described above, the cloud-based storage system may be used to provide block storage services to users of the cloud-based storage system. While the local storage resources and the block-storage resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances may support block-level access, the cloud-based object storage that is attached to the particular cloud computing instance supports only object-based access. In order to address this, the software daemon or some other module of computer program instructions that is executing on the particular cloud computing instance may be configured to take blocks of data, package those blocks into objects, and write the objects to the cloud-based object storage that is attached to the particular cloud computing instance.

Consider an example in which data is written to the local storage resources and the block-storage resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances in 1 MB blocks. In such an example, assume that a user of the cloud-based storage system issues a request to write data that, after being compressed and deduplicated by the storage controller application results in the need to write 5 MB of data. In such an example, writing the data to the local storage resources and the block-storage resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances is relatively straightforward as 5 blocks that are 1 MB in size are written to the local storage resources and the block-storage resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances. In such an example, the software daemon or some other module of computer program instructions that is executing on the particular cloud computing instance may be configured to: 1) create a first object that includes the first 1 MB of data and write the first object to the cloud-based object storage, 2) create a second object that includes the second 1 MB of data and write the second object to the cloud-based object storage, 3) create a third object that includes the third 1 MB of data and write the third object to the cloud-based object storage, and so on. As such, in some embodiments, each object that is written to the cloud-based object storage may be identical (or nearly identical) in size. Readers will appreciate that in such an example, metadata that is associated with the data itself may be included in each object (e.g., the first 1 MB of the object is data and the remaining portion is metadata associated with the data).

Readers will appreciate that the cloud-based object storage may be incorporated into the cloud-based storage system to increase the durability of the cloud-based storage system. Continuing with the example described above where the cloud computing instances are EC2 instances, readers will understand that EC2 instances are only guaranteed to have a monthly uptime of 99.9% and data stored in the local instance store only persists during the lifetime of the EC2 instance. As such, relying on the cloud computing instances with local storage as the only source of persistent data storage in the cloud-based storage system may result in a relatively unreliable storage system. Likewise, EBS volumes are designed for 99.999% availability. As such, even relying on EBS as the persistent data store in the cloud-based storage system may result in a storage system that is not sufficiently durable. Amazon S3, however, is designed to provide 99.999999999% durability, meaning that a cloud-based storage system that can incorporate S3 into its pool of storage is substantially more durable than various other options.

Readers will appreciate that while a cloud-based storage system that can incorporate S3 into its pool of storage is substantially more durable than various other options, utilizing S3 as the primary pool of storage may result in storage system that has relatively slow response times and relatively long I/O latencies. As such, the cloud-based storage system may not only stores data in S3 but the cloud-based storage system also stores data in local storage resources and block-storage resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances, such that read operations can be serviced from local storage resources and the block-storage resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances, thereby reducing read latency when users of the cloud-based storage system attempt to read data from the cloud-based storage system.

In some embodiments, all data that is stored by the cloud-based storage system may be stored in both: 1) the cloud-based object storage, and 2) at least one of the local storage resources or block-storage resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances. In such embodiments, the local storage resources and block-storage resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances may effectively operate as cache that generally includes all data that is also stored in S3, such that all reads of data may be serviced by the cloud computing instances without requiring the cloud computing instances to access the cloud-based object storage. Readers will appreciate that in other embodiments, however, all data that is stored by the cloud-based storage system may be stored in the cloud-based object storage, but less than all data that is stored by the cloud-based storage system may be stored in at least one of the local storage resources or block-storage resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances. In such an example, various policies may be utilized to determine which subset of the data that is stored by the cloud-based storage system should reside in both: 1) the cloud-based object storage, and 2) at least one of the local storage resources or block-storage resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances.

As described above, when the cloud computing instances with local storage are embodied as EC2 instances, the cloud computing instances with local storage are only guaranteed to have a monthly uptime of 99.9% and data stored in the local instance store only persists during the lifetime of each cloud computing instance with local storage. As such, one or more modules of computer program instructions that are executing within the cloud-based storage system (e.g., a monitoring module that is executing on its own EC2 instance) may be designed to handle the failure of one or more of the cloud computing instances with local storage. In such an example, the monitoring module may handle the failure of one or more of the cloud computing instances with local storage by creating one or more new cloud computing instances with local storage, retrieving data that was stored on the failed cloud computing instances from the cloud-based object storage, and storing the data retrieved from the cloud-based object storage in local storage on the newly created cloud computing instances. Readers will appreciate that many variants of this process may be implemented.

Consider an example in which all cloud computing instances with local storage failed. In such an example, the monitoring module may create new cloud computing instances with local storage, where high-bandwidth instances types are selected that allow for the maximum data transfer rates between the newly created high-bandwidth cloud computing instances with local storage and the cloud-based object storage. Readers will appreciate that instances types are selected that allow for the maximum data transfer rates between the new cloud computing instances and the cloud-based object storage such that the new high-bandwidth cloud computing instances can be rehydrated with data from the cloud-based object storage as quickly as possible. Once the new high-bandwidth cloud computing instances are rehydrated with data from the cloud-based object storage, less expensive lower-bandwidth cloud computing instances may be created, data may be migrated to the less expensive lower-bandwidth cloud computing instances, and the high-bandwidth cloud computing instances may be terminated.

Readers will appreciate that in some embodiments, the number of new cloud computing instances that are created may substantially exceed the number of cloud computing instances that are needed to locally store all of the data stored by the cloud-based storage system. The number of new cloud computing instances that are created may substantially exceed the number of cloud computing instances that are needed to locally store all of the data stored by the cloud-based storage system in order to more rapidly pull data from the cloud-based object storage and into the new cloud computing instances, as each new cloud computing instance can (in parallel) retrieve some portion of the data stored by the cloud-based storage system. In such embodiments, once the data stored by the cloud-based storage system has been pulled into the newly created cloud computing instances, the data may be consolidated within a subset of the newly created cloud computing instances and those newly created cloud computing instances that are excessive may be terminated.

Consider an example in which 1000 cloud computing instances are needed in order to locally store all valid data that users of the cloud-based storage system have written to the cloud-based storage system. In such an example, assume that all 1,000 cloud computing instances fail. In such an example, the monitoring module may cause 100,000 cloud computing instances to be created, where each cloud computing instance is responsible for retrieving, from the cloud-based object storage, distinct 1/100,000th chunks of the valid data that users of the cloud-based storage system have written to the cloud-based storage system and locally storing the distinct chunk of the dataset that it retrieved. In such an example, because each of the 100,000 cloud computing instances can retrieve data from the cloud-based object storage in parallel, the caching layer may be restored 100 times faster as compared to an embodiment where the monitoring module only create 1000 replacement cloud computing instances. In such an example, over time the data that is stored locally in the 100,000 could be consolidated into 1,000 cloud computing instances and the remaining 99,000 cloud computing instances could be terminated.

Readers will appreciate that various performance aspects of the cloud-based storage system may be monitored (e.g., by a monitoring module that is executing in an EC2 instance) such that the cloud-based storage system can be scaled-up or scaled-out as needed. Consider an example in which the monitoring module monitors the performance of the could-based storage system via communications with one or more of the cloud computing instances that each are used to support the execution of a storage controller application via monitoring communications between cloud computing instances, via monitoring communications between cloud computing instances and the cloud-based object storage, or in some other way. In such an example, assume that the monitoring module determines that the cloud computing instances that are used to support the execution of a storage controller application are undersized and not sufficiently servicing the I/O requests that are issued by users of the cloud-based storage system. In such an example, the monitoring module may create a new, more powerful cloud computing instance (e.g., a cloud computing instance of a type that includes more processing power, more memory, etc. . . . ) that includes the storage controller application such that the new, more powerful cloud computing instance can begin operating as the primary controller. Likewise, if the monitoring module determines that the cloud computing instances that are used to support the execution of a storage controller application are oversized and that cost savings could be gained by switching to a smaller, less powerful cloud computing instance, the monitoring module may create a new, less powerful (and less expensive) cloud computing instance that includes the storage controller application such that the new, less powerful cloud computing instance can begin operating as the primary controller.

Consider, as an additional example of dynamically sizing the cloud-based storage system, an example in which the monitoring module determines that the utilization of the local storage that is collectively provided by the cloud computing instances has reached a predetermined utilization threshold (e.g., 95%). In such an example, the monitoring module may create additional cloud computing instances with local storage to expand the pool of local storage that is offered by the cloud computing instances. Alternatively, the monitoring module may create one or more new cloud computing instances that have larger amounts of local storage than the already existing cloud computing instances, such that data stored in an already existing cloud computing instance can be migrated to the one or more new cloud computing instances and the already existing cloud computing instance can be terminated, thereby expanding the pool of local storage that is offered by the cloud computing instances. Likewise, if the pool of local storage that is offered by the cloud computing instances is unnecessarily large, data can be consolidated and some cloud computing instances can be terminated.

Readers will appreciate that the cloud-based storage system may be sized up and down automatically by a monitoring module applying a predetermined set of rules that may be relatively simple of relatively complicated. In fact, the monitoring module may not only take into account the current state of the cloud-based storage system, but the monitoring module may also apply predictive policies that are based on, for example, observed behavior (e.g., every night from 10 PM until 6 AM usage of the storage system is relatively light), predetermined fingerprints (e.g., every time a virtual desktop infrastructure adds 100 virtual desktops, the number of IOPS directed to the storage system increase by X), and so on. In such an example, the dynamic scaling of the cloud-based storage system may be based on current performance metrics, predicted workloads, and many other factors, including combinations thereof.

Readers will further appreciate that because the cloud-based storage system may be dynamically scaled, the cloud-based storage system may even operate in a way that is more dynamic. Consider the example of garbage collection. In a traditional storage system, the amount of storage is fixed. As such, at some point the storage system may be forced to perform garbage collection as the amount of available storage has become so constrained that the storage system is on the verge of running out of storage. In contrast, the cloud-based storage system described here can always ‘add’ additional storage (e.g., by adding more cloud computing instances with local storage). Because the cloud-based storage system described here can always ‘add’ additional storage, the cloud-based storage system can make more intelligent decisions regarding when to perform garbage collection. For example, the cloud-based storage system may implement a policy that garbage collection only be performed when the number of TOPS being serviced by the cloud-based storage system falls below a certain level. In some embodiments, other system-level functions (e.g., deduplication, compression) may also be turned off and on in response to system load, given that the size of the cloud-based storage system is not constrained in the same way that traditional storage systems are constrained.

Readers will appreciate that embodiments of the present disclosure resolve an issue with block-storage services offered by some cloud computing environments as some cloud computing environments only allow for one cloud computing instance to connect to a block-storage volume at a single time. For example, in Amazon AWS, only a single EC2 instance may be connected to an EBS volume. Through the use of EC2 instances with local storage, embodiments of the present disclosure can offer multi-connect capabilities where multiple EC2 instances can connect to another EC2 instance with local storage (‘a drive instance’). In such embodiments, the drive instances may include software executing within the drive instance that allows the drive instance to support I/O directed to a particular volume from each connected EC2 instance. As such, some embodiments of the present disclosure may be embodied as multi-connect block storage services.

In some embodiments, especially in embodiments where the cloud-based object storage resources are embodied as Amazon S3, the cloud-based storage system may include one or more modules (e.g., a module of computer program instructions executing on an EC2 instance) that are configured to ensure that when the local storage of a particular cloud computing instance is rehydrated with data from S3, the appropriate data is actually in S3. This issue arises largely because S3 implements an eventual consistency model where, when overwriting an existing object, reads of the object will eventually (but not necessarily immediately) become consistent and will eventually (but not necessarily immediately) return the overwritten version of the object. To address this issue, in some embodiments of the present disclosure, objects in S3 are never overwritten. Instead, a traditional ‘overwrite’ would result in the creation of the new object (that includes the updated version of the data) and the eventual deletion of the old object (that includes the previous version of the data).

In some embodiments of the present disclosure, as part of an attempt to never (or almost never) overwrite an object, when data is written to S3 the resultant object may be tagged with a sequence number. In some embodiments, these sequence numbers may be persisted elsewhere (e.g., in a database) such that at any point in time, the sequence number associated with the most up-to-date version of some piece of data can be known. In such a way, a determination can be made as to whether S3 has the most recent version of some piece of data by merely reading the sequence number associated with an object—and without actually reading the data from S3. The ability to make this determination may be particularly important when a cloud computing instance with local storage crashes, as it would be undesirable to rehydrate the local storage of a replacement cloud computing instance with out-of-date data. In fact, because the cloud-based storage system does not need to access the data to verify its validity, the data can stay encrypted and access charges can be avoided.

The storage systems described above may carry out intelligent data backup techniques through which data stored in the storage system may be copied and stored in a distinct location to avoid data loss in the event of equipment failure or some other form of catastrophe. For example, the storage systems described above may be configured to examine each backup to avoid restoring the storage system to an undesirable state. Consider an example in which malware infects the storage system. In such an example, the storage system may include software resources 314 that can scan each backup to identify backups that were captured before the malware infected the storage system and those backups that were captured after the malware infected the storage system. In such an example, the storage system may restore itself from a backup that does not include the malware—or at least not restore the portions of a backup that contained the malware. In such an example, the storage system may include software resources 314 that can scan each backup to identify the presences of malware (or a virus, or some other undesirable), for example, by identifying write operations that were serviced by the storage system and originated from a network subnet that is suspected to have delivered the malware, by identifying write operations that were serviced by the storage system and originated from a user that is suspected to have delivered the malware, by identifying write operations that were serviced by the storage system and examining the content of the write operation against fingerprints of the malware, and in many other ways.

Readers will further appreciate that the backups (often in the form of one or more snapshots) may also be utilized to perform rapid recovery of the storage system. Consider an example in which the storage system is infected with ransomware that locks users out of the storage system. In such an example, software resources 314 within the storage system may be configured to detect the presence of ransomware and may be further configured to restore the storage system to a point-in-time, using the retained backups, prior to the point-in-time at which the ransomware infected the storage system. In such an example, the presence of ransomware may be explicitly detected through the use of software tools utilized by the system, through the use of a key (e.g., a USB drive) that is inserted into the storage system, or in a similar way. Likewise, the presence of ransomware may be inferred in response to system activity meeting a predetermined fingerprint such as, for example, no reads or writes coming into the system for a predetermined period of time.

Readers will appreciate that the various components described above may be grouped into one or more optimized computing packages as converged infrastructures. Such converged infrastructures may include pools of computers, storage and networking resources that can be shared by multiple applications and managed in a collective manner using policy-driven processes. Such converged infrastructures may be implemented with a converged infrastructure reference architecture, with standalone appliances, with a software driven hyper-converged approach (e.g., hyper-converged infrastructures), or in other ways.

Readers will appreciate that the storage systems described above may be useful for supporting various types of software applications. For example, the storage system 306 may be useful in supporting artificial intelligence (‘AI’) applications, database applications, DevOps projects, electronic design automation tools, event-driven software applications, high performance computing applications, simulation applications, high-speed data capture and analysis applications, machine learning applications, media production applications, media serving applications, picture archiving and communication systems (‘PACS’) applications, software development applications, virtual reality applications, augmented reality applications, and many other types of applications by providing storage resources to such applications.

The storage systems described above may operate to support a wide variety of applications. In view of the fact that the storage systems include compute resources, storage resources, and a wide variety of other resources, the storage systems may be well suited to support applications that are resource intensive such as, for example, AI applications. AI applications may be deployed in a variety of fields, including: predictive maintenance in manufacturing and related fields, healthcare applications such as patient data & risk analytics, retail and marketing deployments (e.g., search advertising, social media advertising), supply chains solutions, fintech solutions such as business analytics & reporting tools, operational deployments such as real-time analytics tools, application performance management tools, IT infrastructure management tools, and many others.

Such AI applications may enable devices to perceive their environment and take actions that maximize their chance of success at some goal. Examples of such AI applications can include IBM Watson, Microsoft Oxford, Google DeepMind, Baidu Minwa, and others. The storage systems described above may also be well suited to support other types of applications that are resource intensive such as, for example, machine learning applications. Machine learning applications may perform various types of data analysis to automate analytical model building. Using algorithms that iteratively learn from data, machine learning applications can enable computers to learn without being explicitly programmed. One particular area of machine learning is referred to as reinforcement learning, which involves taking suitable actions to maximize reward in a particular situation. Reinforcement learning may be employed to find the best possible behavior or path that a particular software application or machine should take in a specific situation. Reinforcement learning differs from other areas of machine learning (e.g., supervised learning, unsupervised learning) in that correct input/output pairs need not be presented for reinforcement learning and sub-optimal actions need not be explicitly corrected.

In addition to the resources already described, the storage systems described above may also include graphics processing units (‘GPUs’), occasionally referred to as visual processing unit (‘VPUs’). Such GPUs may be embodied as specialized electronic circuits that rapidly manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. Such GPUs may be included within any of the computing devices that are part of the storage systems described above, including as one of many individually scalable components of a storage system, where other examples of individually scalable components of such storage system can include storage components, memory components, compute components (e.g., CPUs, FPGAs, ASICs), networking components, software components, and others. In addition to GPUs, the storage systems described above may also include neural network processors (‘NNPs’) for use in various aspects of neural network processing. Such NNPs may be used in place of (or in addition to) GPUs and may be also be independently scalable.

As described above, the storage systems described herein may be configured to support artificial intelligence applications, machine learning applications, big data analytics applications, and many other types of applications. The rapid growth in these sort of applications is being driven by three technologies: deep learning (DL), GPU processors, and Big Data. Deep learning is a computing model that makes use of massively parallel neural networks inspired by the human brain. Instead of experts handcrafting software, a deep learning model writes its own software by learning from lots of examples. Such GPUs may include thousands of cores that are well-suited to run algorithms that loosely represent the parallel nature of the human brain.

Advances in deep neural networks, including the development of multi-layer neural networks, have ignited a new wave of algorithms and tools for data scientists to tap into their data with artificial intelligence (AI). With improved algorithms, larger data sets, and various frameworks (including open-source software libraries for machine learning across a range of tasks), data scientists are tackling new use cases like autonomous driving vehicles, natural language processing and understanding, computer vision, machine reasoning, strong AI, and many others. Applications of such techniques may include: machine and vehicular object detection, identification and avoidance; visual recognition, classification and tagging; algorithmic financial trading strategy performance management; simultaneous localization and mapping; predictive maintenance of high-value machinery; prevention against cyber security threats, expertise automation; image recognition and classification; question answering; robotics; text analytics (extraction, classification) and text generation and translation; and many others. Applications of AI techniques has materialized in a wide array of products include, for example, Amazon Echo's speech recognition technology that allows users to talk to their machines, Google Translate™ which allows for machine-based language translation, Spotify's Discover Weekly that provides recommendations on new songs and artists that a user may like based on the user's usage and traffic analysis, Quill's text generation offering that takes structured data and turns it into narrative stories, Chatbots that provide real-time, contextually specific answers to questions in a dialog format, and many others.

Data is the heart of modern AI and deep learning algorithms. Before training can begin, one problem that must be addressed revolves around collecting the labeled data that is crucial for training an accurate AI model. A full scale AI deployment may be required to continuously collect, clean, transform, label, and store large amounts of data. Adding additional high quality data points directly translates to more accurate models and better insights. Data samples may undergo a series of processing steps including, but not limited to: 1) ingesting the data from an external source into the training system and storing the data in raw form, 2) cleaning and transforming the data in a format convenient for training, including linking data samples to the appropriate label, 3) exploring parameters and models, quickly testing with a smaller dataset, and iterating to converge on the most promising models to push into the production cluster, 4) executing training phases to select random batches of input data, including both new and older samples, and feeding those into production GPU servers for computation to update model parameters, and 5) evaluating including using a holdback portion of the data not used in training in order to evaluate model accuracy on the holdout data. This lifecycle may apply for any type of parallelized machine learning, not just neural networks or deep learning. For example, standard machine learning frameworks may rely on CPUs instead of GPUs but the data ingest and training workflows may be the same. Readers will appreciate that a single shared storage data hub creates a coordination point throughout the lifecycle without the need for extra data copies among the ingest, preprocessing, and training stages. Rarely is the ingested data used for only one purpose, and shared storage gives the flexibility to train multiple different models or apply traditional analytics to the data.

Readers will appreciate that each stage in the AI data pipeline may have varying requirements from the data hub (e.g., the storage system or collection of storage systems). Scale-out storage systems must deliver uncompromising performance for all manner of access types and patterns—from small, metadata-heavy to large files, from random to sequential access patterns, and from low to high concurrency. The storage systems described above may serve as an ideal AI data hub as the systems may service unstructured workloads. In the first stage, data is ideally ingested and stored on to the same data hub that following stages will use, in order to avoid excess data copying. The next two steps can be done on a standard compute server that optionally includes a GPU, and then in the fourth and last stage, full training production jobs are run on powerful GPU-accelerated servers. Often, there is a production pipeline alongside an experimental pipeline operating on the same dataset. Further, the GPU-accelerated servers can be used independently for different models or joined together to train on one larger model, even spanning multiple systems for distributed training. If the shared storage tier is slow, then data must be copied to local storage for each phase, resulting in wasted time staging data onto different servers. The ideal data hub for the AI training pipeline delivers performance similar to data stored locally on the server node while also having the simplicity and performance to enable all pipeline stages to operate concurrently.

In order for the storage systems described above to serve as a data hub or as part of an AI deployment, in some embodiments the storage systems may be configured to provide DMA between storage devices that are included in the storage systems and one or more GPUs that are used in an AI or big data analytics pipeline. The one or more GPUs may be coupled to the storage system, for example, via NVMe-over-Fabrics (‘NVMe-oF’) such that bottlenecks such as the host CPU can be bypassed and the storage system (or one of the components contained therein) can directly access GPU memory. In such an example, the storage systems may leverage API hooks to the GPUs to transfer data directly to the GPUs. For example, the GPUs may be embodied as Nvidia™ GPUs and the storage systems may support GPUDirect Storage (‘GDS’) software, or have similar proprietary software, that enables the storage system to transfer data to the GPUs via RDMA or similar mechanism. Readers will appreciate that in embodiments where the storage systems are embodied as cloud-based storage systems as described below, virtual drive or other components within such a cloud-based storage system may also be configured

Although the preceding paragraphs discuss deep learning applications, readers will appreciate that the storage systems described herein may also be part of a distributed deep learning (‘DDL’) platform to support the execution of DDL algorithms. The storage systems described above may also be paired with other technologies such as TensorFlow, an open-source software library for dataflow programming across a range of tasks that may be used for machine learning applications such as neural networks, to facilitate the development of such machine learning models, applications, and so on.

The storage systems described above may also be used in a neuromorphic computing environment. Neuromorphic computing is a form of computing that mimics brain cells. To support neuromorphic computing, an architecture of interconnected “neurons” replace traditional computing models with low-powered signals that go directly between neurons for more efficient computation. Neuromorphic computing may make use of very-large-scale integration (VLSI) systems containing electronic analog circuits to mimic neuro-biological architectures present in the nervous system, as well as analog, digital, mixed-mode analog/digital VLSI, and software systems that implement models of neural systems for perception, motor control, or multisensory integration.

Readers will appreciate that the storage systems described above may be configured to support the storage or use of (among other types of data) blockchains. In addition to supporting the storage and use of blockchain technologies, the storage systems described above may also support the storage and use of derivative items such as, for example, open source blockchains and related tools that are part of the IBM™ Hyperledger project, permissioned blockchains in which a certain number of trusted parties are allowed to access the block chain, blockchain products that enable developers to build their own distributed ledger projects, and others. Blockchains and the storage systems described herein may be leveraged to support on-chain storage of data as well as off-chain storage of data.

Off-chain storage of data can be implemented in a variety of ways and can occur when the data itself is not stored within the blockchain. For example, in one embodiment, a hash function may be utilized and the data itself may be fed into the hash function to generate a hash value. In such an example, the hashes of large pieces of data may be embedded within transactions, instead of the data itself. Readers will appreciate that, in other embodiments, alternatives to blockchains may be used to facilitate the decentralized storage of information. For example, one alternative to a blockchain that may be used is a blockweave. While conventional blockchains store every transaction to achieve validation, a blockweave permits secure decentralization without the usage of the entire chain, thereby enabling low cost on-chain storage of data. Such blockweaves may utilize a consensus mechanism that is based on proof of access (PoA) and proof of work (PoW).

The storage systems described above may, either alone or in combination with other computing devices, be used to support in-memory computing applications. In-memory computing involves the storage of information in RAM that is distributed across a cluster of computers. Readers will appreciate that the storage systems described above, especially those that are configurable with customizable amounts of processing resources, storage resources, and memory resources (e.g., those systems in which blades that contain configurable amounts of each type of resource), may be configured in a way so as to provide an infrastructure that can support in-memory computing. Likewise, the storage systems described above may include component parts (e.g., NVDIMMs, 3D crosspoint storage that provide fast random access memory that is persistent) that can actually provide for an improved in-memory computing environment as compared to in-memory computing environments that rely on RAM distributed across dedicated servers.

In some embodiments, the storage systems described above may be configured to operate as a hybrid in-memory computing environment that includes a universal interface to all storage media (e.g., RAM, flash storage, 3D crosspoint storage). In such embodiments, users may have no knowledge regarding the details of where their data is stored but they can still use the same full, unified API to address data. In such embodiments, the storage system may (in the background) move data to the fastest layer available—including intelligently placing the data in dependence upon various characteristics of the data or in dependence upon some other heuristic. In such an example, the storage systems may even make use of existing products such as Apache Ignite and GridGain to move data between the various storage layers, or the storage systems may make use of custom software to move data between the various storage layers. The storage systems described herein may implement various optimizations to improve the performance of in-memory computing such as, for example, having computations occur as close to the data as possible.

Readers will further appreciate that in some embodiments, the storage systems described above may be paired with other resources to support the applications described above. For example, one infrastructure could include primary compute in the form of servers and workstations which specialize in using General-purpose computing on graphics processing units (‘GPGPU’) to accelerate deep learning applications that are interconnected into a computation engine to train parameters for deep neural networks. Each system may have Ethernet external connectivity, InfiniBand external connectivity, some other form of external connectivity, or some combination thereof. In such an example, the GPUs can be grouped for a single large training or used independently to train multiple models. The infrastructure could also include a storage system such as those described above to provide, for example, a scale-out all-flash file or object store through which data can be accessed via high-performance protocols such as NFS, S3, and so on. The infrastructure can also include, for example, redundant top-of-rack Ethernet switches connected to storage and compute via ports in MLAG port channels for redundancy. The infrastructure could also include additional compute in the form of whitebox servers, optionally with GPUs, for data ingestion, pre-processing, and model debugging. Readers will appreciate that additional infrastructures are also be possible.

Readers will appreciate that the storage systems described above, either alone or in coordination with other computing machinery may be configured to support other AI related tools. For example, the storage systems may make use of tools like ONXX or other open neural network exchange formats that make it easier to transfer models written in different AI frameworks. Likewise, the storage systems may be configured to support tools like Amazon's Gluon that allow developers to prototype, build, and train deep learning models. In fact, the storage systems described above may be part of a larger platform, such as IBM™ Cloud Private for Data, that includes integrated data science, data engineering and application building services.

Readers will further appreciate that the storage systems described above may also be deployed as an edge solution. Such an edge solution may be in place to optimize cloud computing systems by performing data processing at the edge of the network, near the source of the data. Edge computing can push applications, data and computing power (i.e., services) away from centralized points to the logical extremes of a network. Through the use of edge solutions such as the storage systems described above, computational tasks may be performed using the compute resources provided by such storage systems, data may be storage using the storage resources of the storage system, and cloud-based services may be accessed through the use of various resources of the storage system (including networking resources). By performing computational tasks on the edge solution, storing data on the edge solution, and generally making use of the edge solution, the consumption of expensive cloud-based resources may be avoided and, in fact, performance improvements may be experienced relative to a heavier reliance on cloud-based resources.

While many tasks may benefit from the utilization of an edge solution, some particular uses may be especially suited for deployment in such an environment. For example, devices like drones, autonomous cars, robots, and others may require extremely rapid processing—so fast, in fact, that sending data up to a cloud environment and back to receive data processing support may simply be too slow. As an additional example, some IoT devices such as connected video cameras may not be well-suited for the utilization of cloud-based resources as it may be impractical (not only from a privacy perspective, security perspective, or a financial perspective) to send the data to the cloud simply because of the pure volume of data that is involved. As such, many tasks that really on data processing, storage, or communications may be better suited by platforms that include edge solutions such as the storage systems described above.

The storage systems described above may alone, or in combination with other computing resources, serves as a network edge platform that combines compute resources, storage resources, networking resources, cloud technologies and network virtualization technologies, and so on. As part of the network, the edge may take on characteristics similar to other network facilities, from the customer premise and backhaul aggregation facilities to Points of Presence (PoPs) and regional data centers. Readers will appreciate that network workloads, such as Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) and others, will reside on the network edge platform. Enabled by a combination of containers and virtual machines, the network edge platform may rely on controllers and schedulers that are no longer geographically co-located with the data processing resources. The functions, as microservices, may split into control planes, user and data planes, or even state machines, allowing for independent optimization and scaling techniques to be applied. Such user and data planes may be enabled through increased accelerators, both those residing in server platforms, such as FPGAs and Smart NICs, and through SDN-enabled merchant silicon and programmable ASICs.

The storage systems described above may also be optimized for use in big data analytics. Big data analytics may be generally described as the process of examining large and varied data sets to uncover hidden patterns, unknown correlations, market trends, customer preferences and other useful information that can help organizations make more-informed business decisions. As part of that process, semi-structured and unstructured data such as, for example, internet clickstream data, web server logs, social media content, text from customer emails and survey responses, mobile-phone call-detail records, IoT sensor data, and other data may be converted to a structured form.

The storage systems described above may also support (including implementing as a system interface) applications that perform tasks in response to human speech. For example, the storage systems may support the execution intelligent personal assistant applications such as, for example, Amazon's Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Voice, Samsung Bixby, Microsoft Cortana, and others. While the examples described in the previous sentence make use of voice as input, the storage systems described above may also support chatbots, talkbots, chatterbots, or artificial conversational entities or other applications that are configured to conduct a conversation via auditory or textual methods. Likewise, the storage system may actually execute such an application to enable a user such as a system administrator to interact with the storage system via speech. Such applications are generally capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic, and other real time information, such as news, although in embodiments in accordance with the present disclosure, such applications may be utilized as interfaces to various system management operations.

The storage systems described above may also implement AI platforms for delivering on the vision of self-driving storage. Such AI platforms may be configured to deliver global predictive intelligence by collecting and analyzing large amounts of storage system telemetry data points to enable effortless management, analytics and support. In fact, such storage systems may be capable of predicting both capacity and performance, as well as generating intelligent advice on workload deployment, interaction and optimization. Such AI platforms may be configured to scan all incoming storage system telemetry data against a library of issue fingerprints to predict and resolve incidents in real-time, before they impact customer environments, and captures hundreds of variables related to performance that are used to forecast performance load.

The storage systems described above may support the serialized or simultaneous execution of artificial intelligence applications, machine learning applications, data analytics applications, data transformations, and other tasks that collectively may form an AI ladder. Such an AI ladder may effectively be formed by combining such elements to form a complete data science pipeline, where exist dependencies between elements of the AI ladder. For example, AI may require that some form of machine learning has taken place, machine learning may require that some form of analytics has taken place, analytics may require that some form of data and information architecting has taken place, and so on. As such, each element may be viewed as a rung in an AI ladder that collectively can form a complete and sophisticated AI solution.

The storage systems described above may also, either alone or in combination with other computing environments, be used to deliver an AI everywhere experience where AI permeates wide and expansive aspects of business and life. For example, AI may play an important role in the delivery of deep learning solutions, deep reinforcement learning solutions, artificial general intelligence solutions, autonomous vehicles, cognitive computing solutions, commercial UAVs or drones, conversational user interfaces, enterprise taxonomies, ontology management solutions, machine learning solutions, smart dust, smart robots, smart workplaces, and many others.

The storage systems described above may also, either alone or in combination with other computing environments, be used to deliver a wide range of transparently immersive experiences (including those that use digital twins of various “things” such as people, places, processes, systems, and so on) where technology can introduce transparency between people, businesses, and things. Such transparently immersive experiences may be delivered as augmented reality technologies, connected homes, virtual reality technologies, brain-computer interfaces, human augmentation technologies, nanotube electronics, volumetric displays, 4D printing technologies, or others.

The storage systems described above may also, either alone or in combination with other computing environments, be used to support a wide variety of digital platforms. Such digital platforms can include, for example, 5G wireless systems and platforms, digital twin platforms, edge computing platforms, IoT platforms, quantum computing platforms, serverless PaaS, software-defined security, neuromorphic computing platforms, and so on.

The storage systems described above may also be part of a multi-cloud environment in which multiple cloud computing and storage services are deployed in a single heterogeneous architecture. In order to facilitate the operation of such a multi-cloud environment, DevOps tools may be deployed to enable orchestration across clouds. Likewise, continuous development and continuous integration tools may be deployed to standardize processes around continuous integration and delivery, new feature rollout and provisioning cloud workloads. By standardizing these processes, a multi-cloud strategy may be implemented that enables the utilization of the best provider for each workload.

The storage systems described above may be used as a part of a platform to enable the use of crypto-anchors that may be used to authenticate a product's origins and contents to ensure that it matches a blockchain record associated with the product. Similarly, as part of a suite of tools to secure data stored on the storage system, the storage systems described above may implement various encryption technologies and schemes, including lattice cryptography. Lattice cryptography can involve constructions of cryptographic primitives that involve lattices, either in the construction itself or in the security proof. Unlike public-key schemes such as the RSA, Diffie-Hellman or Elliptic-Curve cryptosystems, which are easily attacked by a quantum computer, some lattice-based constructions appear to be resistant to attack by both classical and quantum computers.

A quantum computer is a device that performs quantum computing. Quantum computing is computing using quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement. Quantum computers differ from traditional computers that are based on transistors, as such traditional computers require that data be encoded into binary digits (bits), each of which is always in one of two definite states (0 or 1). In contrast to traditional computers, quantum computers use quantum bits, which can be in superpositions of states. A quantum computer maintains a sequence of qubits, where a single qubit can represent a one, a zero, or any quantum superposition of those two qubit states. A pair of qubits can be in any quantum superposition of 4 states, and three qubits in any superposition of 8 states. A quantum computer with n qubits can generally be in an arbitrary superposition of up to 2{circumflex over ( )}n different states simultaneously, whereas a traditional computer can only be in one of these states at any one time. A quantum Turing machine is a theoretical model of such a computer.

The storage systems described above may also be paired with FPGA-accelerated servers as part of a larger AI or ML infrastructure. Such FPGA-accelerated servers may reside near (e.g., in the same data center) the storage systems described above or even incorporated into an appliance that includes one or more storage systems, one or more FPGA-accelerated servers, networking infrastructure that supports communications between the one or more storage systems and the one or more FPGA-accelerated servers, as well as other hardware and software components. Alternatively, FPGA-accelerated servers may reside within a cloud computing environment that may be used to perform compute-related tasks for AI and ML jobs. Any of the embodiments described above may be used to collectively serve as a FPGA-based AI or ML platform. Readers will appreciate that, in some embodiments of the FPGA-based AI or ML platform, the FPGAs that are contained within the FPGA-accelerated servers may be reconfigured for different types of ML models (e.g., LSTMs, CNNs, GRUs). The ability to reconfigure the FPGAs that are contained within the FPGA-accelerated servers may enable the acceleration of a ML or AI application based on the most optimal numerical precision and memory model being used. Readers will appreciate that by treating the collection of FPGA-accelerated servers as a pool of FPGAs, any CPU in the data center may utilize the pool of FPGAs as a shared hardware microservice, rather than limiting a server to dedicated accelerators plugged into it.

The FPGA-accelerated servers and the GPU-accelerated servers described above may implement a model of computing where, rather than keeping a small amount of data in a CPU and running a long stream of instructions over it as occurred in more traditional computing models, the machine learning model and parameters are pinned into the high-bandwidth on-chip memory with lots of data streaming though the high-bandwidth on-chip memory. FPGAs may even be more efficient than GPUs for this computing model, as the FPGAs can be programmed with only the instructions needed to run this kind of computing model.

The storage systems described above may be configured to provide parallel storage, for example, through the use of a parallel file system such as BeeGFS. Such parallel files systems may include a distributed metadata architecture. For example, the parallel file system may include a plurality of metadata servers across which metadata is distributed, as well as components that include services for clients and storage servers.

The systems described above can support the execution of a wide array of software applications. Such software applications can be deployed in a variety of ways, including container-based deployment models. Containerized applications may be managed using a variety of tools. For example, containerized applications may be managed using Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, and others. Containerized applications may be used to facilitate a serverless, cloud native computing deployment and management model for software applications. In support of a serverless, cloud native computing deployment and management model for software applications, containers may be used as part of an event handling mechanisms (e.g., AWS Lambdas) such that various events cause a containerized application to be spun up to operate as an event handler.

The systems described above may be deployed in a variety of ways, including being deployed in ways that support fifth generation (‘5G’) networks. 5G networks may support substantially faster data communications than previous generations of mobile communications networks and, as a consequence may lead to the disaggregation of data and computing resources as modern massive data centers may become less prominent and may be replaced, for example, by more-local, micro data centers that are close to the mobile-network towers. The systems described above may be included in such local, micro data centers and may be part of or paired to multi-access edge computing (‘MEC’) systems. Such MEC systems may enable cloud computing capabilities and an IT service environment at the edge of the cellular network. By running applications and performing related processing tasks closer to the cellular customer, network congestion may be reduced and applications may perform better.

The storage systems described above may also be configured to implement NVMe Zoned Namespaces. Through the use of NVMe Zoned Namespaces, the logical address space of a namespace is divided into zones. Each zone provides a logical block address range that must be written sequentially and explicitly reset before rewriting, thereby enabling the creation of namespaces that expose the natural boundaries of the device and offload management of internal mapping tables to the host. In order to implement NVMe Zoned Name Spaces (‘ZNS’), ZNS SSDs or some other form of zoned block devices may be utilized that expose a namespace logical address space using zones. With the zones aligned to the internal physical properties of the device, several inefficiencies in the placement of data can be eliminated. In such embodiments, each zone may be mapped, for example, to a separate application such that functions like wear levelling and garbage collection could be performed on a per-zone or per-application basis rather than across the entire device. In order to support ZNS, the storage controllers described herein may be configured with to interact with zoned block devices through the usage of, for example, the Linux™ kernel zoned block device interface or other tools.

The storage systems described above may also be configured to implement zoned storage in other ways such as, for example, through the usage of shingled magnetic recording (SMR) storage devices. In examples where zoned storage is used, device-managed embodiments may be deployed where the storage devices hide this complexity by managing it in the firmware, presenting an interface like any other storage device. Alternatively, zoned storage may be implemented via a host-managed embodiment that depends on the operating system to know how to handle the drive, and only write sequentially to certain regions of the drive. Zoned storage may similarly be implemented using a host-aware embodiment in which a combination of a drive managed and host managed implementation is deployed.

The embodiments may be integrated with a computing device that may be specifically configured to perform one or more of the processes described herein. The computing device may include a communication interface, a processor, a storage device, and an input/output (“I/O”) module communicatively connected one to another via a communication infrastructure

A Communication interface may be configured to communicate with one or more computing devices. Examples of communication interface include, without limitation, a wired network interface (such as a network interface card), a wireless network interface (such as a wireless network interface card), a modem, an audio/video connection, and any other suitable interface.

A Processor generally represents any type or form of processing unit capable of processing data and/or interpreting, executing, and/or directing execution of one or more of the instructions, processes, and/or operations described herein. Processor may perform operations by executing computer-executable instructions (e.g., an application, software, code, and/or other executable data instance) stored in storage device.

A Storage device may include one or more data storage media, devices, or configurations and may employ any type, form, and combination of data storage media and/or device. For example, the storage device may include, but is not limited to, any combination of the non-volatile media and/or volatile media described herein. Electronic data, including data described herein, may be temporarily and/or permanently stored in storage device. For example, data representative of computer-executable instructions configured to direct processor to perform any of the operations described herein may be stored within storage device. In some examples, data may be arranged in one or more databases residing within storage device.

An I/O module may include one or more I/O modules configured to receive user input and provide user output. The I/O module may include any hardware, firmware, software, or combination thereof supportive of input and output capabilities. For example, I/O module may include hardware and/or software for capturing user input, including, but not limited to, a keyboard or keypad, a touchscreen component (e.g., touchscreen display), a receiver (e.g., an RF or infrared receiver), motion sensors, and/or one or more input buttons.

An I/O module may include one or more devices for presenting output to a user, including, but not limited to, a graphics engine, a display (e.g., a display screen), one or more output drivers (e.g., display drivers), one or more audio speakers, and one or more audio drivers. In certain embodiments, I/O module is configured to provide graphical data to a display for presentation to a user. The graphical data may be representative of one or more graphical user interfaces and/or any other graphical content as may serve a particular implementation. In some examples, any of the systems, computing devices, and/or other components described herein may be implemented by computing device.

The storage systems described above may, either alone or in combination, by configured to serve as a continuous data protection store. A continuous data protection store is a feature of a storage system that records updates to a dataset in such a way that consistent images of prior contents of the dataset can be accessed with a low time granularity (often on the order of seconds, or even less), and stretching back for a reasonable period of time (often hours or days). These allow access to very recent consistent points in time for the dataset, and also allow access to access to points in time for a dataset that might have just preceded some event that, for example, caused parts of the dataset to be corrupted or otherwise lost, while retaining close to the maximum number of updates that preceded that event. Conceptually, they are like a sequence of snapshots of a dataset taken very frequently and kept for a long period of time, though continuous data protection stores are often implemented quite differently from snapshots. A storage system implementing a data continuous data protection store may further provide a means of accessing these points in time, accessing one or more of these points in time as snapshots or as cloned copies, or reverting the dataset back to one of those recorded points in time.

Over time, to reduce overhead, some points in the time held in a continuous data protection store can be merged with other nearby points in time, essentially deleting some of these points in time from the store. This can reduce the capacity needed to store updates. It may also be possible to convert a limited number of these points in time into longer duration snapshots. For example, such a store might keep a low granularity sequence of points in time stretching back a few hours from the present, with some points in time merged or deleted to reduce overhead for up to an additional day. Stretching back in the past further than that, some of these points in time could be converted to snapshots representing consistent point-in-time images from only every few hours.

The present disclosure relates to independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources in a storage system. Storage systems described herein may include a plurality of blades. Each of the blades in the storage system may be embodied, for example, as a computing device that includes one or more computer processors, dynamic random access memory (‘DRAM’), flash memory, interfaces for one more communication busses, interfaces for one or more power distribution busses, cooling components, one or more chassis, a switch, and so on. Although the blades will be described in more detail below, readers will appreciate that the blades may be embodied as different types of blades, such that the collective set of blades include heterogeneous members.

Each of the blades in the storage system may be mounted within one of a plurality of chassis. Each chassis may be embodied, for example, as physical structure that helps protect and organize components within the storage system. Each chassis may include a plurality of slots, where each slot is configured to receive a blade. Each chassis may also include one or more mechanisms such as a power distribution bus that is utilized to provide power to each blade that is mounted within the chassis, one or more data communication mechanisms such as a data communication bus that enables communication between each blade that is mounted within the chassis, one or more data communication mechanisms such as a data communication bus that enables communication between each blade that is mounted within and an external data communications network, and so on. In fact, each chassis may include at least two instances of both the power distribution mechanism and the communication mechanisms, where each instance of the power distribution mechanism and each instance of the communication mechanisms may be enabled or disabled independently.

As mentioned above, the present disclosure relates to independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources. Compute resources may be scaled independently of storage resources, for example, by altering the amount of compute resources that are provided by the storage system without changing the amount of storage resources that are provided by the storage system or by changing the amount of storage resources that are provided by the storage system without changing the amount of compute resources that are provided by the storage system. Compute resources and storage resources may be independently scaled, for example, by adding blades that only include storage resources, by adding blades that only include compute resources, by enabling compute resources on a blade to be powered up or powered down with no impact to the storage resources in the storage system, by enabling storage resources on a blade to be powered up or powered down with no impact to the compute resources in the storage system, and so on. As such, embodiments of the present disclosure will be described that include hardware support for independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources, software support for independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources, or any combination thereof.

Example apparatuses and storage systems that support independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources in accordance with the present disclosure are described with reference to the accompanying drawings, beginning with FIG. 4. FIG. 4 sets forth a diagram of a chassis (424) for use in a storage system that supports independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources. The chassis (424) depicted in FIG. 4 may be embodied, for example, as an enclosure that may be mounted within a larger enclosure (e.g., a rack) to form a multi-chassis storage system. The chassis (424) depicted in FIG. 4 may include a plurality of slots (420) where each slot is configured to receive a blade (422). Although not depicted in the example of FIG. 4, readers will appreciate that each slot may include various support structures such as rails, locking mechanisms, and other physical components for securing a blade (422) within a particular slot. Furthermore, in alternative embodiments, a single blade may span multiple slots.

The blade (422) depicted in FIG. 4 may be embodied, for example, as a computing device that includes one or more computer processors, dynamic random access memory (‘DRAM’), flash memory, interfaces for one more communication busses, interfaces for one or more power distribution busses, cooling components, and so on. Although blades will be described in more detail below, readers will appreciate that the chassis (424) may be configured to support different types of blades, such that the collective set of blades may include heterogeneous members. Blades may be of different types as some blades may only provide processing resources to the overall storage system, some blades may only provide storage resources to the overall storage system, and some blades may provide both processing resources and storage resources to the overall storage system. Furthermore, even the blades that are identical in type may be different in terms of the amount of storage resources that the blades provide to the overall storage system. For example, a first blade that only provides storage resources to the overall storage system may provide 8 TB of storage while a second blade that only provides storage resources to the overall storage system may provide 256 TB of storage. The blades that are identical in type may also be different in terms of the amount of processing resources that the blades provide to the overall storage system. For example, a first blade that only provides processing resources to the overall storage system may include more processors or more powerful processors than a second blade that only provides processing resources to the overall storage system. Readers will appreciate that other differences may also exist between two individual blades and that blade uniformity is not required according to embodiments described herein.

The chassis (424) depicted in FIG. 4 may also include a compartment (416) that is used to house computing devices and computing components that are utilized by the blades that are mounted within the chassis (424). The compartment (416) may include, for example, one or more power supplies that are used to provide power to one or more blades mounted within the chassis (424), one or more power busses that are used to deliver power from one or more power supplies to one or more blades mounted within the chassis (424), one or more network switches that are used to route data communications between blades mounted within the chassis (424), one or more network switches that are used to route data communications between blades mounted within the chassis (424) and a data communications network that is external to the chassis (424), one or more data communications busses, and so on. Readers will appreciate that additional computing devices and computing components may be mounted within the compartment (416) according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

The chassis (424) depicted in FIG. 4 may also include a connector panel (418) that is used to support various interfaces and connectors that allow components within the blades that are mounted within the chassis (424) to couple to computing devices and computing components that are housed in the compartment (416). The connector panel (418) may be used to provide various interfaces and connectors to each blade (422), as each slot may have a unique set of interfaces and connectors mounted on the connector panel (418), such that a blade that is mounted within a particular slot may couple to the unique set of interfaces and connectors mounted on the connector panel (418) when the blade is inserted into the particular slot. In the example depicted in FIG. 4, four network interfaces (402, 404, 406, 408) are mounted on the connector panel (418) for use by the blade (422) depicted in FIG. 4 when the blade (422) is inserted into a slot (426). The four network interfaces (402, 404, 406, 408) may be embodied, for example, as an RJ45 connector that is coupled to an Ethernet cable and inserted into an Ethernet port on the blade (422), as a 9-pin DE-9 cable connector that is coupled to an optical fiber cable and inserted into a Fibre Channel port on the blade (422), as a cooper or optical Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable (‘QSFP’) for Ethernet, InfiniBand, or other high speed signaling interface, as other interfaces that enable an Ethernet adapter in the blade (422) to be coupled to a data communications network, as other interfaces that enable a Fibre Channel adapter in the blade (422) to be coupled to a data communications network, as other interfaces that enable other types of host bus adapters in the blade (422) to be coupled to a data communications network, and so on. Readers will appreciate that each of the four network interfaces (402, 404, 406, 408) may be used to couple the blade (422) to distinct data communications networks, two or more of the network interfaces (402, 404, 406, 408) may be used to couple the blade (422) to the same data communications networks, one or more of the network interfaces (402, 404, 406, 408) may be used to couple the blade (422) to other blades or computing devices for point-to-point communications with the blade (422), and so on.

In the example depicted in FIG. 4, two power interfaces are also mounted on the connector panel (418) for use by the blade (422) depicted in FIG. 4 when the blade (422) is inserted into a slot (426). The power interfaces (412, 414) may be embodied, for example, as an interface to a power bus that is coupled to a power supply for delivering power to one or more of the blades in the chassis (424). Readers will appreciate that each power interface (412, 414) may be coupled to an independently controlled power domain, such that enabling or disabling the delivery of power to the blade (422) via the first power interface (412) has no impact on the delivery of power to the blade (422) via the second power interface (414), and vice versa. Readers will appreciate that some components within the blade (422) may be configured to receive power via the first power interface (412) while other components within the blade (422) may be configured to receive power via the second power interface (414), so that the delivery of power to different components within the blade (422) may be independently controlled. For example, compute resources within the blade (422) may receive power via the first power interface (412) while storage resources within the blade (422) may receive power via the second power interface (414).

In the example depicted in FIG. 4, a cooling apparatus (410) is also mounted on the connector panel (418). The cooling apparatus (410) may be embodied, for example, as a fan that is configured to deliver air flow to the blade (422) when the blade is inserted into the slot (426). Readers will appreciate that the connector panel (418) may include other interfaces not depicted here, different numbers of interfaces than are depicted here, and so on. Readers will further appreciate that while a connector panel (418) is one possible way to enable the blades that are mounted within the chassis (424) to couple to computing devices and computing components that are housed in the compartment (416), chassis for use in storage systems according to embodiments of the present disclosure can utilize other mechanisms to enable the blades that are mounted within the chassis (424) to couple to computing devices and computing components that are housed in the compartment (416). Furthermore, such computing devices and computing components do not have to be contained within a distinct compartment (416), as chassis (424) for use in storage systems according to embodiments of the present disclosure may be embodied in other ways.

For further explanation, FIG. 5 sets forth a diagram of a hybrid blade (502) useful in storage systems that support independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure. The hybrid blade (502) depicted in FIG. 5 is referred to as a ‘hybrid’ blade because the hybrid blade (502) includes both compute resources and storage resources.

The compute resources in the hybrid blade (502) depicted in FIG. 5 includes a host server (504) that contains a computer processor (506) coupled to memory (510) via a memory bus (508). The computer processor (506) depicted in FIG. 5 may be embodied, for example, as a central processing unit (CPU′) or other form of electronic circuitry configured to execute computer program instructions. The computer processor (506) may utilize the memory (510) to store data or other information useful during the execution of computer program instructions by the computer processor (506). Such memory (510) may be embodied, for example, as DRAM that is utilized by the computer processor (506) to store information when the computer processor (506) is performing computational tasks such as creating and sending I/O operations to one of the storage units (512, 514), breaking up data, reassembling data, and other tasks. In the example depicted in FIG. 2, the host server (504) can represent compute resources that the hybrid blade (502) may offer for use by entities executing on a storage system that includes the hybrid blade (502). For example, one or more authorities (which will be described in greater detail below) that are executing on the storage system may execute on the host server (504).

In the example depicted in FIG. 5, the host server (504) is coupled to two data communication links (532, 534). Such data communications links (532, 534) may be embodied, for example, as Ethernet links, such that the host server (504) can be coupled to a data communication network via a network adapter (not shown) contained in the host server (504). Through the use of such data communications links (532, 534), the host server (504) may receive input/output operations that are directed to the attached storage units (512, 514), such as requests to read data from the attached storage units (512, 514) or requests to write data to the attached storage units (512, 514), from other blades in a storage system that includes the hybrid blade (802).

The hybrid blade (502) depicted in FIG. 5 also includes storage resources in the form of one or more storage units (510, 514). Each storage unit (510, 514) may include flash (528, 530) memory as well as other forms of memory (524, 526), such as non-volatile random access memory (‘NVRAM’) which will be discussed in greater detail below. In the example depicted in FIG. 5, each storage unit (512, 514) can represent storage resources that the hybrid blade (502) may offer for use by users of a storage system that includes the hybrid blade (502). In the example depicted in FIG. 5, the storage units (512, 514) may include integrated circuits such as a field-programmable gate array (‘FPGA’) (520, 522), microprocessors such as an Advanced RISC Machine (‘ARM’) microprocessor that are utilized to write data to and read data from the flash (528, 530) memory as well as the other forms of memory (524, 526) in the storage unit (512, 514), or any other form of computer processor. The FPGAs (520, 522) and the ARM (516, 518) microprocessors may, in some embodiments, perform operations other than strict memory accesses. For example, in some embodiments the FPGAs (520, 522) and the ARM (516, 518) microprocessors may break up data, reassemble data, and so on. In the example depicted in FIG. 5, the computer processor (506) may access the storage units (512, 514) via a data communication bus (536) such as a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (‘PCIe’) bus. In the example depicted in FIG. 5, the data communication bus (536), ARM (516, 518) microprocessors, and FPGAs (520, 522) form a local access interface through which the local compute resources (e.g., the host server (504)) can access the local storage resources (e.g., the flash memory (528, 530) and other forms of memory (524, 526)).

In the example depicted in FIG. 5, the hybrid blade (502) also includes data communications links (538, 540) that may be used to communicatively couple one or more of the storage units (512, 514) to other blades in the storage system. The data communications links (538, 540) may be embodied, for example, as an Ethernet link that enables an FPGA (520, 522) in the storage unit (512, 514) to couple to a data communications network. The data communications links (538, 540) and the FPGAs (520, 522) may collectively form a remote access interface through which compute resources on a remote blade can access the local storage resources (e.g., the flash memory (528, 530) and other forms of memory (524, 526)) without utilizing the local compute resources (e.g., the host server (504)). In such an example, compute resources on a remote blade may send an instruction to write data to, or read data from, the local storage resources directly to the FPGA (520, 522) in the storage unit (512, 514) via the data communications links (538, 540). In such a way, compute resources on a remote blade can directly access local storage resources on the hybrid blade (502) without needing to route such an access request through the local compute resources on the hybrid blade (502).

Although in some embodiments the remote access interface may be embodied as an Ethernet interface and the local access interface may be embodied as a PCIe interface, readers will appreciate that hybrid blades (502) according to embodiments of the present disclosure may utilize other types of interfaces for the remote access interface and the local access interface. In some embodiments the remote access interface and the local access interface may be implemented using the same technologies, in other embodiments the remote access interface and the local access interface may be implemented using other technologies, and so on.

In the example depicted in FIG. 5, the hybrid blade (502) also includes a power interface (546) and a power distribution bus (548) through which power can be provided to the host server (504). The power interface (546) may be coupled, for example, to a first power supply, to a first power bus that is external to the hybrid blade (502) and provided by the chassis that the blade is mounted within, and so on. Readers will appreciate that the power interface (546) and the power distribution bus (548) may collectively form a first local power domain that is configured to deliver power to the local compute resources (e.g., the host server (504)).

In the example depicted in FIG. 5, the hybrid blade (502) also includes a power interface (542) and a power distribution bus (544) through which power can be provided to one or more of the storage units (512, 514). The power interface (542) may be coupled, for example, to a second power supply, to a second power bus that is external to the hybrid blade (502) and provided by the chassis that the blade is mounted within, and so on. Readers will appreciate that the power interface (542) and the power distribution bus (544) may collectively form a second local power domain that is configured to deliver power to the local storage resources (e.g., the storage units (512, 514). In the example depicted in FIG. 5, the first local power domain and the second local power domain can be independently operated as the power interfaces (542, 546) may be enabled or disabled independently, the distinct power supplies that are coupled to the power interfaces (542, 546) may be enabled or disabled independently, the distinct power busses that are coupled to the power interfaces (542, 546) may be enabled or disabled independently, and so on. In such a way, the delivery of power to the host server (504) may be enabled or disabled independently of the delivery of power to one or more of the storage units (512, 514), and vice versa.

Readers will appreciate that in the example depicted in FIG. 5, the second local power domain described in the preceding paragraph can also include a remote access interface such as the data communications links (538, 540). As described above, the data communications links (538, 540) may be embodied as an Ethernet link that enables an FPGA (520, 522) in the storage unit (512, 514) to couple to a data communications network. Power may therefore be delivered to the local storage resources (e.g., the storage units (512, 514)) via the data communications links (538, 540), for example, through the use of Power over Ethernet (‘PoE’) techniques. In such a way, when a remote blade is accessing the local storage resources via the remote access interface, the storage units (512, 514) may be powered using remote access interface, whereas the storage units (512, 514) may be powered using the power interfaces (542, 546) and the power distribution bus (544) when the local compute resources are accessing the local storage resources. In alternative embodiments, power may be provided to the storage units (512, 514) in different ways, so long as the delivery of power to the host server (504) may be enabled or disabled independently of the delivery of power to one or more of the storage units (512, 514), and vice versa.

The preceding paragraphs describe non-limiting, example embodiments of a first local power domain and a second local power domain. In alternative embodiments, the first local power domain and the second local power domain may include fewer or additional components. The first local power domain and the second local power domain may also be configured to deliver power to components within the hybrid blade (502) in coordination with components that are external to the hybrid blade (502) such as, for example, external power supplies, external power busses, external data communications networks, and so on. The first local power domain and the second local power domain may also be coupled to receive power from the same power source (e.g., the same power supply), so long as the delivery of power to the host server (504) may be enabled or disabled independently of the delivery of power to one or more of the storage units (512, 514), and vice versa. In an embodiment where the first local power domain and the second local power domain may receive power from the same power source, the delivery of power to the host server (504) may be enabled or disabled independently of the delivery of power to one or more of the storage units (512, 514), and vice versa, through the use of a switching mechanism, power delivery network, or other mechanism that enables the delivery of power to each power domain to be blocked or enabled independently. Readers will appreciate that additional embodiments are possible that are consistent with the spirit of the present disclosure.

Readers will appreciate that other types of blades may also exist. For example, a compute blade may be similar to the hybrid blade (502) depicted in FIG. 5 as the compute blade may include one or more host servers that are similar to the host server (504) depicted in FIG. 5. Such a compute blade may be different than the hybrid blade (502) depicted in FIG. 5, however, as the compute blade may lack the storage units (512, 514) depicted in FIG. 5. Readers will further appreciate that a storage blade may be similar to the hybrid blade (502) depicted in FIG. 5 as the storage blade may include one or more storage units that are similar to the storage units (512, 514) depicted in FIG. 5. Such a storage blade may be different than the hybrid blade (502) depicted in FIG. 5, however, as the storage blade may lack the host server (504) depicted in FIG. 5. The example blade (502) depicted in FIG. 5 is included only for explanatory purposes. In other embodiments, the blades may include additional processors, additional storage units, compute resources that are packaged in a different manner, storage resources that are packaged in a different manner, and so on.

For further explanation, FIG. 6 sets forth a diagram of an additional hybrid blade (602) useful in storage systems that support independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure. The hybrid blade (602) depicted in FIG. 6 is similar to the hybrid blade (502) depicted in FIG. 5, as the hybrid blade (802) depicted in FIG. 6 also includes local storage resources such as the storage units (512, 514), local compute resources such as the host server (504), a local access interface through which the local compute resources can access the local storage resources, a remote access interface through which compute resources on a remote blade can access the local storage resources without utilizing the local compute resources, a first local power domain configured to deliver power to the local compute resources, and a second local power domain configured to deliver power to the local storage resources, where the first local power domain and the second local power domain can be independently operated.

The hybrid blade (602) depicted in FIG. 6 also includes a switching mechanism (604, 606) that is configured to provide access to local storage resources such as the storage units (512, 514). Each switching mechanism (604, 606) may be configured to couple to the local compute resources via a first interface and further configured to couple to remote compute resources via a second interface. The first switching mechanism (604), for example, may be coupled to local compute resources in the form of a host server (504) via a first interface such as the local access interface and also coupled to remote compute resources in the form of a host server on a remote blade (not shown) via a second interface such as the remote access interface that includes the data communications link (538). The second switching mechanism (606) may be coupled to local compute resources in the form of a host server (504) via a first interface such as the local access interface and also coupled to remote compute resources in the form of a host server on a remote blade (not shown) via a second interface such as the remote access interface that includes the data communications link (540). In the specific example illustrated in FIG. 6, the first switching mechanism (604) is coupled to the remote access interface that includes the data communications link (538), such that the storage unit (512) may be accessed by a host server on a remote blade without utilizing the local compute resources in the hybrid blade (602). The second switching mechanism (606), however, is coupled to the local access interface, such that the storage unit (514) may be accessed by the local compute resources in the hybrid blade (602). In such an example, however, the dashed lines in the switching mechanisms (604, 606) are used to illustrate that each switching mechanism (604, 606) may be reconfigured to couple the storage units (512, 514) to a different data communications pathway. In the example depicted in FIG. 6, each switching mechanism (604, 606) may be embodied as a mechanical device that can facilitate a data communications connection between a particular storage unit (512, 514) and a plurality of data communications pathways, although at any particular time each switching mechanism (604, 606) may only facilitate data communications between the particular storage unit (512, 514) and a single data communications pathway.

For further explanation, FIG. 7 sets forth a diagram of a storage blade (702) useful in storage systems that support independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure. The storage blade (702) depicted in FIG. 7 is similar to the hybrid blade described above with reference to FIG. 5 and FIG. 6, although the storage blade (702) is different than the hybrid blades described above as the storage blade (702) does not include any local compute resources that are available for use by a storage system that the storage blade (702) is included within.

The storage blade (702) depicted in FIG. 7 includes storage resources in the form of one or more storage units (512, 514). Each storage unit (512, 514) may include flash (528, 530) memory as well as other forms of memory (524, 526), such as ‘NVRAM, which will be discussed in greater detail below. In the example depicted in FIG. 4, each storage unit (512, 514) can represent storage resources that the storage blade (702) may offer for use by users of a storage system that includes the storage blade (702).

In the example depicted in FIG. 7, the storage units (512, 514) may include integrated circuits such as an FPGA (520, 522), microprocessors such as an ARM microprocessor that are utilized to write data to and read data from the flash (528, 530) memory as well as the other forms of memory (524, 526) in the storage unit (512, 514), or any other form of computer processor. The FPGAs (520, 522) and the ARM (516, 518) microprocessors may, in some embodiments, perform operations other than strict memory accesses. For example, in some embodiments the FPGAs (520, 522) and the ARM (516, 518) microprocessors may break up data, reassemble data, and so on.

In the example depicted in FIG. 7, the storage blade (702) also includes data communications links (538, 540) that may be used to couple one or more of the storage units (512, 514) to other blades in the storage system. The data communications links (538, 540) may be embodied, for example, as an Ethernet link that enables an FPGA (520, 522) in the storage unit (512, 514) to couple to a data communications network. The data communications links (538, 540) and the FPGAs (520, 522) may collectively form a remote access interface through which compute resources on a remote blade can access the local storage resources (e.g., the flash memory (528, 530) and other forms of memory (524, 526)) without utilizing any local compute resources on the storage blade (702). In such an example, compute resources on a remote blade may send an instruction to write data to, or read data from, the local storage resources directly to the FPGA (520, 522) in the storage unit (512, 514) via the data communications links (538, 540). In such a way, compute resources on a remote blade can directly access local storage resources on the hybrid blade (502) without needing to route such an access request through local compute resources on the storage blade (702).

In the example depicted in FIG. 7, the storage blade (702) also includes a power interface (542) and a power distribution bus (544) through which power can be provided to one or more of the storage units (512, 514). The power interface (542) may be coupled, for example, to a power supply, to a power bus that is external to the hybrid blade (502) and provided by the chassis that the blade is mounted within, and so on. Readers will appreciate that the power interface (542) and the power distribution bus (544) may collectively form a local power domain configured to deliver power to the local storage resources (e.g., the storage units (512, 514). Readers will appreciate that in the example depicted in FIG. 7, the local power domain can also include a remote access interface such as the data communications links (538, 540). As described above, the data communications links (538, 540) may be embodied as an Ethernet link that enables an FPGA (520, 522) in the storage unit (512, 514) to couple to a data communications network. Power may therefore be delivered to the local storage resources (e.g., the storage units (512, 514)) via the data communications links (538, 540), for example, through the use of PoE techniques. In such a way, power may be delivered to the storage units (512, 514) via the remote access interface, via the power interface (542) and power distribution bus (544), or any combination thereof.

For further explanation, FIG. 8 sets forth a diagram of a compute blade (802) useful in storage systems that support independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure. The compute blade (802) depicted in FIG. 8 is similar to the hybrid blade described above with reference to FIG. 5 and FIG. 6, although the compute blade (802) is different than the hybrid blades described above as the compute blade (802) does not include any local storage resources that may be used that are available for use by a storage system that the compute blade (802) is included within.

The compute resources in the compute blade (802) depicted in FIG. 8 includes a host server (504) that contains a computer processor (506) coupled to memory (510) via a memory bus (508). The computer processor (506) depicted in FIG. 8 may be embodied, for example, as a CPU or other form of electronic circuitry configured to execute computer program instructions. The computer processor (506) may utilize the memory (510) to store data or other information useful during the execution of computer program instructions by the computer processor (506). Such memory (510) may be embodied, for example, as DRAM that is utilized by the computer processor (506) to store information when the computer processor (506) is performing computational tasks such as creating and sending I/O operations to one of the storage units (512, 514), breaking up data, reassembling data, and other tasks. In the example depicted in FIG. 5, the host server (504) can represent compute resources that the compute blade (802) may offer for use by entities executing on a storage system that includes the compute blade (802). For example, one or more authorities (which will be described in greater detail below) that are executing on the storage system may execute on the host server (504). In the example depicted in FIG. 8, the host server (504) is coupled to two data communication links (532, 534). Such data communications links (532, 534) may be embodied, for example, as Ethernet links, such that the host server (504) can be coupled to a data communication network via a network adapter (not shown) contained in the host server (504).

In the example depicted in FIG. 8, the compute blade (802) also includes a power interface (546) and a power distribution bus (548) through which power can be provided to the host server (504). The power interface (546) may be coupled, for example, to a power supply, to a power bus that is external to the compute blade (802) and provided by the chassis that the blade is mounted within, and so on. Readers will appreciate that the power interface (546) and the power distribution bus (548) may collectively form a local power domain that is configured to deliver power to the local compute resources (e.g., the host server (504)) in the compute blade (802).

For further explanation, FIG. 9 sets forth a diagram of a storage system that supports independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure. The storage system of FIG. 9 includes a plurality of chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) mounted within a rack (600). The rack (600) depicted in FIG. 9 may be embodied as a standardized frame or enclosure for mounting multiple equipment modules, such as multiple chassis (602, 606, 610, 614). The rack (600) may be embodied, for example, as a 19-inch rack that includes edges or ears that protrude on each side, thereby enabling a chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) or other module to be fastened to the rack (600) with screws or some other form of fastener. Readers will appreciate that while the storage system depicted in FIG. 6 includes a plurality of chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) mounted within a single rack (600), in other embodiments the plurality of chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) may be distributed across multiple racks. For example, a first chassis in the storage system may be mounted within a first rack, a second chassis in the storage system may be mounted within a second rack, and so on.

Although depicted in less detail, each of the chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) depicted in FIG. 9 may be similar to the chassis described above with reference to FIG. 1, as the chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) include a plurality of slots, where each slot is configured to receive a blade. The chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) depicted in FIG. 9 may be embodied, for example, as passive elements that includes no logic. Each chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) may include a mechanism, such as a power distribution bus, that is utilized to provide power to each blade that is mounted within the chassis (602, 606, 610, 614). Each chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) may further include a communication mechanism, such as a communication bus, that enables communication between each blade that is mounted within the chassis (602, 606, 610, 614). The communication mechanism may be embodied, for example, as an Ethernet bus, a PCIe bus, InfiniBand bus, and so on. In some embodiments, each chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) may include at least two instances of both the power distribution mechanism and the communication mechanism, where each instance of the power distribution mechanism and each instance of the communication mechanism may be enabled or disabled independently.

Each chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) depicted in FIG. 9 may also include one or more ports for receiving an external communication bus that enables communication between multiple chassis (602, 606, 610, 614), directly or through a switch, as well as communications between a chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) and an external client system. The external communication bus may use a technology such as Ethernet, InfiniBand, Fibre Channel, and so on. In some embodiments, the external communication bus may use different communication bus technologies for inter-chassis communication than is used for communication with an external client system. In embodiments where one or more switches are deployed, each switch may act as a translation layer between multiple protocols or technologies. When multiple chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) are connected to define a storage cluster, the storage cluster may be accessed by a client using either proprietary interfaces or standard interfaces such a PCIe interface, a SAS interfaces, a SATA interface, or other interface using protocols such as network file system (‘NFS’), common internet file system (‘CIFS’), small computer system interface (‘SCSI’), hypertext transfer protocol (‘HTTP’), Object storage protocols, and so on. Translation from the client protocol may occur at the switch, external communication bus, or within each blade.

Each chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) depicted in FIG. 9 houses fifteen blades (604, 608, 612, 616), although in other embodiments each chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) may house more or fewer blades. Each of the blades (604, 608, 612, 616) depicted in FIG. 9 may be embodied, for example, as a computing device that includes one or more computer processors, DRAM, flash memory, interfaces for one more communication busses, interfaces for one or more power distribution busses, cooling components, and so on. Readers will appreciate that the blades (604, 608, 612, 616) depicted in FIG. 9 may be embodied as different types of blades, such that the collective set of blades (604, 608, 612, 616) include heterogeneous members. Blades may be of different types as some blades (604, 608, 612, 616) may only provide processing resources to the overall storage system, some blades (604, 608, 612, 616) may only provide storage resources to the overall storage system, and some blades (604, 608, 612, 616) may provide both processing resources and storage resources to the overall storage system. Furthermore, even the blades (604, 608, 612, 616) that are identical in type may be different in terms of the amount of storage resources that the blades (604, 608, 612, 616) provide to the overall storage system. For example, a first blade that only provides storage resources to the overall storage system may provide 8 TB of storage while a second blade that only provides storage resources to the overall storage system may provide 256 TB of storage. The blades (604, 608, 612, 616) that are identical in type may also be different in terms of the amount of processing resources that the blades (604, 608, 612, 616) provide to the overall storage system. For example, a first blade that only provides processing resources to the overall storage system may include more processors or more powerful processors than a second blade that only provides processing resources to the overall storage system. Readers will appreciate that other differences may also exist between two individual blades and that blade uniformity is not required according to embodiments described herein.

Although not explicitly depicted in FIG. 9, each chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) may include one or more modules, data communications busses, or other apparatus that is used to identify which type of blade is inserted into a particular slot of the chassis (602, 606, 610, 614). In such an example, a management module may be configured to request information from each blade in each chassis (602, 606, 610, 614) when each blade is powered on, when the blade is inserted into a chassis (602, 606, 610, 614), or at some other time. The information received by the management module can include, for example, a special purpose identifier maintained by the blade that identifies the type (e.g., storage blade, compute blade, hybrid blade) of blade that has been inserted into the chassis (602, 606, 610, 614). In an alternative embodiment, each blade (604, 608, 612, 616) may be configured to automatically provide such information to a management module as part of a registration process.

In the example depicted in FIG. 9, the storage system may be initially configured by a management module that is executing remotely. The management module may be executing, for example, in a network switch control processor. Readers will appreciate that such a management module may be executing on any remote CPU and may be coupled to the storage system via one or more data communication networks. Alternatively, the management module may be executing locally as the management module may be executing on one or more of the blades (604, 608, 612, 616) in the storage system.

The storage system depicted in FIG. 9 includes a first blade (618) mounted within one of the chassis (602) that includes one or more storage resources but does not include compute resources. The first blade (618) may be embodied, for example, as a storage blade such as the storage blade described above with reference to FIG. 7. The storage system depicted in FIG. 9 also includes a second blade (620) mounted within one of the chassis (606) that includes one or more compute resources but does not include storage resources. The second blade (620) may be embodied, for example, as a compute blade such as the compute blade described above with reference to FIG. 8. The storage system depicted in FIG. 9 also includes a third blade (622) mounted within one of the chassis (610) that includes one or more storage resources and one or more compute resources. The third blade (622) may be embodied, for example, as a hybrid blade such as the hybrid blades described above with reference to FIG. 5 and FIG. 6.

The third blade (622) depicted in FIG. 9 may include a local access interface through which the compute resources in the third blade (622) can access the storage resources in the third blade (622). The compute resources in the third blade (622) may be embodied, for example, as one or more host servers that include a computer processor coupled to memory via a memory bus. The storage resources in the third blade (622) may be embodied, for example, as one or more storage units that include flash memory as well as other forms of memory, such as NVRAM, which will be discussed in greater detail below. In such an example, the compute resources in the third blade (622) may access the storage resources (622) in the third blade (622), for example, via a local access interface such as a data communication bus that forms a data communications path between the compute resources in the third blade (622) and the storage resources (622) in the third blade (622), as well as any other microprocessors, FPGAs, or other computing devices required to carry out data communications between the compute resources in the third blade (622) and the storage resources (622) in the third blade (622).

The third blade (622) depicted in FIG. 9 may also include a remote access interface through which compute resources in a remote blade can access the storage resources in the third blade (622) without utilizing the compute resources in the third blade (622). The remote access interface may be embodied, for example, as a data communications interface in the third blade (622) that enables an FPGA, microprocessor, or other form of computing device that is part of the storage resources in the third blade (622) to couple to a data communications network. In such an example, compute resources on a remote blade may send an instruction to write data to, or read data from, the storage resources on the third blade (622) directly to microprocessor, or other form of computing device that is part of the storage resources in the third blade (622). In such a way, compute resources on a remote blade can directly access storage resources on the third blade (622) without needing to route such an access request through the compute resources on the third blade (622). Readers will appreciate that the remote access interface in the third blade (622) may utilize first data communications protocol while the local access interface in the third blade (622) may utilize a different, second data communications protocol.

The third blade (622) depicted in FIG. 9 may also include a first power interface for delivering power to the compute resources in the third blade (622). The first power interface may be embodied, for example, as a port for coupling to a power source that is external to the third blade (622) and a power distribution bus that couples the port to one or more compute resources such as a host server. The port may be coupled, for example, to a first power supply, to a first power bus that is external to the third blade (622) and provided by the chassis (610) that the blade is mounted within, and so on.

The third blade (622) depicted in FIG. 9 may also include a second power interface for delivering power to the storage resources in the third blade (622). The second power interface may be embodied, for example, as a port for coupling to a power source that is external to the third blade (622) and a power distribution bus that couples the port to one or more storage resources such as one or more storage units. The port may be coupled, for example, to a second power supply, to a second power bus that is external to the third blade (622) and provided by the chassis (610) that the blade is mounted within, and so on.

In the example depicted in FIG. 9, power delivery to the first power interface in the third blade (622) may be controlled independently of power delivery to the second power interface in the third blade (622). Power delivery to the first power interface may be controlled independently of power delivery to the second power interface, for example, because the first power interface is coupled to a first power source and the second power interface is coupled to a second power source. In such an example, powering up or down either power source would result in power delivery to the first power interface being controlled independently of power delivery to the second power interface.

Power delivery to the first power interface may also be controlled independently of power delivery to the second power interface, for example, because the first power interface can be enabled or disabled independently of enabling or disabling the second power interface, the second power interface can be enabled or disabled independently of enabling or disabling the first power interface, and so on. In such an example, each of the power interfaces may include some mechanism that allows the power interface to block the flow of electricity through the power interface, such that the power interface is disabled. Each power interfaces may likewise include some mechanism, which may be the same mechanism as described in the preceding sentence, that allows the power interface to permit the flow of electricity through the power interface, such that the power interface is enabled.

In the example depicted in FIG. 9, the second power interface in the third blade (622) may be included within the remote access interface in the third blade (622). As described above, the remote access interface in the third blade (622) may be embodied as an Ethernet link that enables an FPGA, microprocessor, or other computing device in a storage unit in the third blade (622) to couple to a data communications network. Power may therefore be delivered to the storage unit in the third blade (622) such an Ethernet link, for example, through the use of PoE techniques. In such a way, when a remote blade is accessing the storage unit in the third blade (622) via the remote access interface in the third blade (622), such a storage unit may be powered using remote access interface.

The third blade (622) depicted in FIG. 9 may also include a switching mechanism configured to provide access to the storage resources in the third blade (622), where the switching mechanism is configured to couple to compute resources in the third blade (622) via a first interface and also configured to couple to compute resources on a remote blade via a second interface. The switching mechanism may be coupled to local storage resources via a first interface such as a data communications link that is coupled to compute resources within the third blade (622). The switching mechanism may also be coupled to local storage resources via a second data communications link that is coupled to compute resources on another blade in the storage system, such that the local storage resources may be accessed without utilizing compute resources within the third blade (622). The switching mechanism may be embodied as a mechanical device that can facilitate a data communications connection between a particular storage unit and a plurality of data communications pathways, although at any particular time the switching mechanism may only facilitate data communications between the particular storage unit and a single data communications pathway.

For further explanation, FIG. 10 sets forth a diagram of a storage system (702) that supports independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure. The storage system (702) depicted in FIG. 10 includes one or more chassis (704, 738). Although depicted in less detail, each of the chassis (704, 738) depicted in FIG. 10 may be similar to the chassis described above with reference to FIG. 4, as each chassis (704, 738) includes a plurality of slots, where each slot is configured to receive a blade. Each chassis (704, 738) may include mechanisms, such as one or more power distribution busses, that are utilized to provide power to blades that are mounted within the chassis (704, 738). Each chassis (704, 738) may further include mechanisms, such as one or more communication busses, that facilitate data communications between one or more blades that are mounted within the chassis (704, 738), as well as other data communications devices such as network switches that are mounted within the chassis (704, 738). The communication mechanisms may be embodied, for example, as one or more Ethernet busses, as one or more PCIe busses, as one or more InfiniBand busses, and so on. In some embodiments, each chassis (704, 738) may include at least two instances of both a power distribution mechanism and a communication mechanism, where each instance of the power distribution mechanism and each instance of the communication mechanism may be enabled or disabled independently.

Each chassis (704, 738) depicted in FIG. 10 may also include one or more ports for receiving an external communication bus that enables communication between multiple chassis (704, 738), directly or through a switch, as well as communications between a chassis (704, 738) and an external client system. The external communication bus may use a technology such as Ethernet, InfiniBand, Fibre Channel, and so on. In some embodiments, the external communication bus may use different communication bus technologies for inter-chassis communication than is used for communication with an external client system. In embodiments where one or more switches are deployed, each switch may act as a translation layer between multiple protocols or technologies. When multiple chassis (704, 738) are connected to define a storage cluster, the storage cluster may be accessed by a client using either proprietary interfaces or standard interfaces such a PCIe interface, a SAS interfaces, a SATA interface, or other interface using protocols such as NFS, CIFS, SCSI, HTTP, Object, and so on. Translation from the client protocol may occur at the switch, external communication bus, or within each blade.

Although not explicitly depicted in FIG. 10, each chassis (704, 738) may include one or more modules, data communications busses, or other apparatus that is used to identify which type of blade is inserted into a particular slot of the chassis (704, 738). In such an example, a management module may be configured to request information from each blade in each chassis (704, 738) when each blade is powered on, when the blade is inserted into a chassis (704, 738), or at some other time. The information received by the management module can include, for example, a special purpose identifier maintained by the blade that identifies the type (e.g., storage blade, compute blade, hybrid blade) of blade that has been inserted into the chassis (704, 738). In an alternative embodiment, each blade may be configured to automatically provide such information to a management module as part of a registration process.

The storage system (702) depicted in FIG. 10 also includes a plurality of compute resources (714, 716, 748). The compute resources (714, 716, 748) in the storage system (702) depicted in FIG. 10 may be embodied, for example, as one or more host servers such as the host servers described above with reference to FIGS. 5, 6, and 8. Such host servers may reside in blades (752, 754, 756) that are mounted within one or more slots (706, 708, 740) in the storage system (702).

The storage system (702) depicted in FIG. 10 also includes a plurality of storage resources (734, 736, 750). The storage resources (734, 736, 750) in the storage system (702) depicted in FIG. 10 may be embodied, for example, as one or more storage units such as the storage units described above with reference to FIGS. 5, 6, and 7. Such storage units may reside in blades (752, 754, 758) that are mounted within one or more slots (706, 708, 742) in the storage system (702).

The storage system (702) depicted in FIG. 10 also includes a plurality of blades (752, 754, 756, 758). In the example depicted in FIG. 10, each of the blades (752, 754, 756, 758) includes at least one compute resource (714, 716, 748) or at least one storage resource (734, 736, 750). Each of the blades (752, 754, 756, 758) may therefore be embodied, for example, as a hybrid blade, as a compute blade, or as a storage blade as described above with reference to FIGS. 5, 6, 7, and 8.

In the example storage system (702) depicted in FIG. 10, each of the storage resources (734, 736, 750) may be directly accessed by each of the compute resources (714, 716, 748) without utilizing an intermediate compute resource (714, 716, 748). Each of the storage resources (734, 736, 750) may be directly accessed by each of the compute resources (714, 716, 748) without utilizing an intermediate compute resource (714, 716, 748), for example, through the use of a remote access interface that provides access to the storage resources (734, 736, 750). Such a remote access interface may be embodied, for example, as an Ethernet link is coupled to an FPGA in a storage unit, thereby enabling the storage unit to be coupled for data communications with a data communications network that each of the remote compute resources (714, 716, 748) may also be coupled to. In such an example, compute resources on a remote blade can access a storage unit on a local blade without utilizing the compute resources on the local blade as the compute resources on the remote blade may send an instruction to write data to, or read data from, the storage unit, without routing such an instruction through compute resources on the local blade.

In the example depicted in FIG. 10, the storage system (702) also includes a first power domain configured to deliver power to one or more of the compute resources. The first power domain may be embodied, for example, as a power supply, power distribution bus, and power interface to a host server, where the first power interface is configured to deliver power to one or more of the compute resources. In the example depicted in FIG. 10, three power domains (710, 712, 744) are depicted that may serve as distinct instances of a first power domain that is configured to deliver power to one or more of the compute resources (714, 716, 748). Readers will appreciate that although each of the compute resources (714, 716, 748) depicted in FIG. 10 receive power from a distinct instance of a first power domain, in other embodiments, one or more of the compute resources (714, 716, 748) may be configured to receive power from the same instance of a first power domain, such that multiple compute resources (714, 716, 748) may be powered up or powered down by enabling or disabling the delivery of power by a single instance of a first power domain.

In the example depicted in FIG. 10, the storage system (702) also includes a second power domain configured to deliver power to the storage resources. The second power domain may be embodied, for example, as a power supply, power distribution bus, and power interface to a storage unit, where the second power domain is configured to deliver power to one or more of the storage resources. In the example depicted in FIG. 10, three power domains (730, 732, 746) are depicted that may serve as distinct instances of a second power domain that is configured to deliver power to one or more of the storage resources (734, 736, 750). Readers will appreciate that although each of the storage resources (734, 736, 750) depicted in FIG. 10 receive power from a distinct instance of a second power domain, in other embodiments, one or more of the storage resources (734, 736, 750) may be configured to receive power from the same instance of a second power domain, such that multiple storage resources (734, 736, 750) may be powered up or powered down by enabling or disabling the delivery of power by a single instance of a second power domain.

The preceding paragraphs describe non-limiting, example embodiments of a first power domain and a second power domain. In some embodiments, the first power domain and the second power domain may include fewer or additional components. The first power domain and the second power domain may also be configured to deliver power to components within the storage system (702) in coordination with components such as, for example, external power supplies, external power busses, external data communications networks, and so on. The first power domain and the second power domain may also be coupled to receive power from the same power source (e.g., the same power supply), so long as the delivery of power to one or more compute resources (714, 716, 748) may be enabled or disabled independently of the delivery of power to one or more storage resources (734, 736, 750), and vice versa. In an embodiment where the first power domain and the second power domain receive power from the same power source, the delivery of power to one or more compute resources (714, 716, 748) may be enabled or disabled independently of the delivery of power to one or more storage resources (734, 736, 750), and vice versa, through the use of a switching mechanism, power delivery network, or other mechanism that enables the delivery of power to each power domain to be blocked or enabled independently. Readers will appreciate that additional embodiments are possible that are consistent with the spirit of the present disclosure.

In the example depicted in FIG. 10, each instance of a first power domain can be operated independently of each instance of a second power domain. Each instance of a first power domain can be operated independently of each instance of a second power domain as the power interfaces within each power domain (710, 712, 730, 732, 744, 746) may be enabled or disabled independently, the distinct power supplies that provide power to each power domain (710, 712, 730, 732, 744, 746) may be enabled or disabled independently, the distinct power busses that are included in each power domain (710, 712, 730, 732, 744, 746) may be enabled or disabled independently, and so on. In such a way, the delivery of power to one or more compute resources (714, 716, 748) may be enabled or disabled independently of the delivery of power to one or more storage resources (734, 736, 750), and vice versa. Because the delivery of power to one or more compute resources (714, 716, 748) may be enabled or disabled independently of the delivery of power to one or more storage resources (734, 736, 750), independent scaling of each type of resources may be achieved by enabling or disabling the delivery of power to only one type (i.e., storage or compute) of resource. For example, enabling the delivery of power to one or more storage resources increases the amount of storage resources available in the storage system (702) without impacting the amount of compute resources available in the storage system (702), disabling the delivery of power to one or more storage resources decreases the amount of storage resources available in the storage system (702) without impacting the amount of compute resources available in the storage system (702), enabling the delivery of power to one or more compute resources increases the amount of compute resources available in the storage system (702) without impacting the amount of storage resources available in the storage system (702), disabling the delivery of power to one or more compute resources decreases the amount of compute resources available in the storage system (702) without impacting the amount of storage resources available in the storage system (702), and so on.

The storage system (702) depicted in FIG. 10 includes a blade (756) that includes compute resources (748) but does not include storage resources. Although the blade (756) that includes compute resources (748) but does not include storage resources is depicted in less detail, readers will appreciate that the blade (756) may be similar to the compute blade described above with reference to FIG. 8. The storage system (702) depicted in FIG. 10 also includes a blade (758) that includes storage resources (750) but does not include any compute resources. Although the blade (758) that includes storage resources (750) but does not include any compute resources is depicted in less detail, readers will appreciate that the blade (758) may be similar to the storage blade described above with reference to FIG. 7. The storage system (702) depicted in FIG. 10 also includes blades (752, 754) that include storage resources (734, 736) and compute resources (714, 716). Although the blades (752, 754) that include storage resources (734, 736) and compute resources (714, 716) are depicted in less detail, readers will appreciate that the blades (752, 754) may be similar to the hybrid blades described above with reference to FIG. 5 and FIG. 6.

In the example depicted in FIG. 10, each of the blades (752, 754) that include storage resources (734, 736) and compute resources (714, 716) can also include a local access interface (718, 720) through which the local compute resources (714, 716) can access the local storage resources (734, 736). Each local access interface (718, 720) may be embodied, for example, as a data communication bus that forms a data communications path between the compute resources (714, 716) in a particular blade (752, 754) and one or more storage resources (734, 736) within the same particular blade (752, 754), as well as any other microprocessors, FPGAs, or other computing devices required to carry out data communications between the compute resources (714, 716) in a particular blade (752, 754) and one or more storage resources (734, 736) within the same particular blade (752, 754).

In the example depicted in FIG. 10, each of the blades (752, 754) that include storage resources (734, 736) and compute resources (714, 716) can also include a remote access interface (722, 724) through which compute resources (748) on a remote blade (756) can access the local storage resources (734, 736) without utilizing the local compute resources (714, 716). Each remote access interface (722, 724) may be embodied, for example, as a data communications interface in each of the blades (752, 754) that enables an FPGA, microprocessor, or other form of computing device that is part of the storage resources (734, 736) in a particular blade (752, 754) to couple to a data communications network. In such an example, compute resources (714, 716, 748) on a remote blade (752, 754, 756) may send an instruction to write data to, or read data from, the storage resources (734, 736) in a different blade (752, 754) directly to microprocessor, or other form of computing device that is part of the storage resources (734, 736) in the different blade (752, 754). For example, compute resources (714, 748) on two of the blades (752, 756) may directly send an instruction to write data to, or read data from, the storage resources (736) in another blade (754) without utilizing the compute resources (716) on the targeted blade (754), compute resources (716, 748) on two of the blades (754, 756) may directly send an instruction to write data to, or read data from, the storage resources (734) in another blade (752) without utilizing the compute resources (714) on the targeted blade (752), and so on.

In the example depicted in FIG. 10, each of the blades (752, 754) that include storage resources (734, 736) and compute resources (714, 716) can also include a switching mechanism (728, 728) configured to provide access to the local storage resources (734, 736), where the switching mechanism (726, 728) is coupled to the local compute resources (714, 716) via the local access interface (718, 720) and the switching mechanism (726, 728) is coupled to the compute resources (714, 716, 748) on a remote blade (752, 754, 756) via a remote access interface (722, 724). For example, the switching mechanism (726) in one of the illustrated blades (752) may be coupled to the local compute resources (714) on the illustrated blade (752) via the local access interface (718) and the switching mechanism (726, 728) may also be coupled to the compute resources (716, 748) on a remote blade (754, 756) via a remote access interface (722) on the illustrated blade (752). Likewise, the switching mechanism (728) in another illustrated blade (754) may be coupled to its local compute resources (716) via the local access interface (720) and the switching mechanism (728) may also be coupled to the compute resources (714, 748) on a remote blade (752, 756) via a remote access interface (724) on the blade (754). In the example depicted in FIG. 10, each switching mechanism (726, 728) may be similar to the switching mechanisms described above with reference to FIG. 6.

In the example depicted in FIG. 10, each remote access interface (722, 724) may utilize a first data communications protocol and each local access interface (718, 720) may utilize a second data communications protocol. For each, the storage resources (734, 736) may be accessed by local compute resources (714, 716) via the local access interface (718, 720) by utilizing a PCIe data communications link whereas the storage resources (734, 736) may be accessed by compute resources (714, 716, 748) on a remote blade (752, 754, 756) via the remote access interface (722, 724) by utilizing an Ethernet data communications link.

In the example depicted in FIG. 10, each of the blades (752, 754) that include storage resources (734, 736) and compute resources (714, 716) can also include a first local power domain (710, 712) configured to deliver power to the local compute resources (714, 716). The first local power domain (710, 712) in each of the blades (752, 754) that include storage resources (734, 736) and compute resources (714, 716) may be embodied, for example, as a power supply, power distribution bus, and power interface to a host server, where the first power interface is configured to deliver power to one or more of the compute resources (714, 716) in the blade (752, 754). In the example depicted in FIG. 10, each of the blades (752, 754) that include storage resources (734, 736) and compute resources (714, 716) can also include a second local power domain (730, 732) configured to deliver power to the local storage resources (734, 736). The second local power domain (730, 732) in each of the blades (752, 754) that include storage resources (734, 736) and compute resources (714, 716) may be embodied, for example, as a power supply, power distribution bus, and power interface to a storage unit, where the second power domain is configured to deliver power to one or more of the storage resources (734, 736) in the blade (752, 754).

Readers will appreciate that, for each of the blades (752, 754) that include storage resources (734, 736) and compute resources (714, 716), the first local power domain (710, 712) and the second local power domain (730, 732) may be independently operated. The first local power domain (710, 712) and the second local power domain (730, 732) in a particular blade (752, 754) may be operated independently as the power interfaces within each power domain (710, 712, 730, 732) may be enabled or disabled independently, the distinct power supplies that provide power to each power domain (710, 712, 730, 732) may be enabled or disabled independently, the distinct power busses that are included in each power domain (710, 712, 730, 732) may be enabled or disabled independently, and so on. In such a way, the delivery of power to one or more compute resources (714, 716) may be enabled or disabled independently of the delivery of power to one or more storage resources (734, 736), and vice versa.

In the example depicted in FIG. 10, the storage resources (734, 736, 750) within at least one blade (752, 754, 756) may receive power via a remote access interface. As described above, the storage resources (734, 736, 750) within each blade (752, 754, 756) may be accessed via a remote access interface (722, 724, 760). Such remote access interface (722, 724, 760) can include an Ethernet link that enables a storage unit to couple to a data communications network. Power may therefore be delivered to the storage resources (734, 736, 750), for example, through the use of PoE techniques. In such a way, when a remote blade is accessing the storage resources (734, 736, 750) within a particular blade (752, 754, 758) via the remote access interface (722, 724, 760), the storage resources (734, 736, 750) may be powered using the remote access interface (722, 724, 760). In alternative embodiments, power may be provided to the storage resources (734, 736, 750) in different ways.

For further explanation, FIG. 11 sets forth a diagram of a set of blades (802, 804, 806, 808) useful in a storage system that supports independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure. Although blades will be described in greater detail below, the blades (802, 804, 806, 808) depicted in FIG. 11 may include compute resources (810, 812, 814), storage resources in the form of flash memory (830, 832, 834), storage resources in the form of non-volatile random access memory (‘NVRAM’) (836, 838, 840), or any combination thereof. In the example depicted in FIG. 11, the blades (802, 804, 806, 808) are of differing types. For example, one blade (806) includes only compute resources (814), another blade (808) includes only storage resources, depicted here as flash (834) memory and NVRAM (840), and two of the blades (802, 804) include compute resources (810, 812) as well as storage resources in the form of flash (830, 832) memory and NVRAM (836, 838). In such of an example, the blade (806) that includes only compute resources (814) may be referred to as a compute blade, the blade (808) that includes only storage resources may be referred to as a storage blade, and the blades (802, 804) that include both compute resources (810, 812) and storage resources may be referred to as a hybrid blade.

The compute resources (810, 812, 814) depicted in FIG. 11 may be embodied, for example, as one or more computer processors, as well as memory that is utilized by the computer processor but not included as part of general storage within the storage system. The compute resources (810, 812, 814) may be coupled for data communication with other blades and with external client systems, for example, via one or more data communication busses that are coupled to the compute resources (810, 812, 814) via one or more data communication adapters.

The flash memory (830, 832, 834) depicted in FIG. 11 may be embodied, for example, as multiple flash dies which may be referred to as packages of flash dies or an array of flash dies. Such flash dies may be packaged in any number of ways, with a single die per package, multiple dies per package, in hybrid packages, as bare dies on a printed circuit board or other substrate, as encapsulated dies, and so on. Although not illustrated in FIG. 11, an input output (I/O) port may be coupled to the flash dies and a direct memory access (DMA′) unit may also be coupled directly or indirectly to the flash dies. Such components may be implemented, for example, on a programmable logic device (PLD′) such as a field programmable gate array (‘FPGA’). The flash memory (830, 832, 834) depicted in FIG. 11 may be organized as pages of a predetermined size, blocks that include a predetermined number of pages, and so on.

The NVRAM (836, 838, 840) depicted in FIG. 11 may be embodied, for example, as one or more non-volatile dual in-line memory modules (‘NVDIMMs’), as one more DRAM dual in-line memory modules (‘DIMMs’) that receive primary power through a DIMM slot but are also attached to a backup power source such as a supercapacitor, and so on. The NVRAM (836, 838, 840) depicted in FIG. 11 may be utilized as a memory buffer for temporarily storing data that will be written to flash memory (830, 832, 834), as writing data to the NVRAM (836, 838, 840) may be carried out more quickly than writing data to flash memory (830, 832, 834). In this way, the latency of write requests may be significantly improved relative to a system in which data is written directly to the flash memory (830, 832, 834).

In the example method depicted in FIG. 11, a first blade (802) includes a first authority (168) that is executing on the compute resources (810) within the first blade (802) and a second blade (806) includes a second authority (168) that is executing on the compute resources (814) within the second blade (806). Each authority (168) represents a logical partition of control and may be embodied as a module of software executing on the compute resources (810, 812, 814) of a particular blade (802, 804, 806). Each authority (168) may be configured to control how and where data is stored in storage system. For example, authorities (168) may assist in determining which type of erasure coding scheme is applied to the data, authorities (168) may assist in determining where one or more portions of the data may be stored in the storage system, and so on. Each authority (168) may control a range of inode numbers, segment numbers, or other data identifiers which are assigned to data by a file system or some other entity.

Each authority (168) may operate independently and autonomously on its partition of each of the entity spaces defined within the system. Each authority (168) may serve as an independent controller over those spaces, each providing its own data and metadata structures, its own background workers, and maintaining its own lifecycle. Each authority (168) may, for example, allocate its own segments, maintains its own log/pyramid, maintain its own NVRAM, define its own sequence ranges for advancing persistent state, boot independently, and so on.

Readers will appreciate that every piece of data and every piece of metadata stored in the storage system is owned by a particular authority (168). Each authority (168) may cause data that is owned by the authority (168) to be stored within storage that is located within the same blade whose computing resources are supporting the authority (168) or within storage that is located on some other blade. In the example depicted in FIG. 11:

-   -   a. The authority (168) that is executing on the compute         resources (810) within a first blade (802) has caused data to be         stored within a portion (820) of flash (830) that is physically         located within the first blade (802).     -   b. The authority (168) that is executing on the compute         resources (810) within a first blade (802) has also caused data         to be stored in a portion (842) of NVRAM (836) that is         physically located within the first blade (802).     -   c. The authority (168) that is executing on the compute         resources (810) within the first blade (802) has also caused         data to be stored within a portion (822) of flash (832) on the         second blade (804) in the storage system.     -   d. The authority (168) that is executing on the compute         resources (810) within the first blade (802) has also caused         data to be stored within a portion (826) of flash (834) and a         portion (846) of NVRAM (840) on the fourth blade (808) in the         storage system.     -   e. The authority (168) that is executing on the compute         resources (814) within the third blade (802) has caused data to         be stored within a portion (844) of NVRAM (836) that is         physically located within the first blade (802).     -   f. The authority (168) that is executing on the compute         resources (814) within the third blade (802) has also caused         data to be stored within a portion (824) of flash (832) within         the second blade (804).     -   g. The authority (168) that is executing on the compute         resources (814) within the third blade (802) has also caused         data to be stored within a portion (828) of flash (834) within         the fourth blade (808).     -   h. The authority (168) that is executing on the compute         resources (814) within the third blade (802) has also caused         data to be stored within a portion (848) of NVRAM (840) within         the fourth blade (808).

Readers will appreciate that many embodiments other than the embodiment depicted in FIG. 11 are contemplated as it relates to the relationship between data, authorities, and system components. In some embodiments, every piece of data and every piece of metadata has redundancy in the storage system. In some embodiments, the owner of a particular piece of data or a particular piece of metadata may be a ward, with an authority being a group or set of wards. Likewise, in some embodiments there are redundant copies of authorities. In some embodiments, authorities have a relationship to blades and the storage resources contained therein. For example, each authority may cover a range of data segment numbers or other identifiers of the data and each authority may be assigned to a specific storage resource. Data may be stored in a segment according to some embodiments of the present disclosure, and such segments may be associated with a segment number which serves as indirection for a configuration of a RAID stripe. A segment may identify a set of storage resources and a local identifier into the set of storage resources that may contain data. In some embodiments, the local identifier may be an offset into a storage device and may be reused sequentially by multiple segments. In other embodiments the local identifier may be unique for a specific segment and never reused. The offsets in the storage device may be applied to locating data for writing to or reading from the storage device.

Readers will appreciate that if there is a change in where a particular segment of data is located (e.g., during a data move or a data reconstruction), the authority for that data segment should be consulted. In order to locate a particular piece of data, a hash value for a data segment may be calculated, an inode number may be applied, a data segment number may be applied, and so on. The output of such an operation can point to a storage resource for the particular piece of data. In some embodiments the operation described above may be carried out in two stages. The first stage maps an entity identifier (ID) such as a segment number, an inode number, or directory number to an authority identifier. This mapping may include a calculation such as a hash or a bit mask. The second stage maps the authority identifier to a particular storage resource, which may be done through an explicit mapping. The operation may be repeatable, so that when the calculation is performed, the result of the calculation reliably points to a particular storage resource. The operation may take the set of reachable storage resources as input, and if the set of reachable storage resources changes, the optimal set changes. In some embodiments, a persisted value represents the current assignment and the calculated value represents the target assignment the cluster will attempt to reconfigure towards.

The compute resources (810, 812, 814) within the blades (802, 804, 806) may be tasked with breaking up data to be written to storage resources in the storage system. When data is to be written to a storage resource, the authority for that data is located as described above. When the segment ID for data is already determined, the request to write the data is forwarded to the blade that is hosting the authority, as determined using the segment ID. The computing resources on such a blade may be utilized to break up the data and transmit the data for writing to a storage resource, at which point the transmitted data may be written as a data stripe in accordance with an erasure coding scheme. In some embodiments, data is requested to be pulled and in other embodiments data is pushed. When compute resources (810, 812, 814) within the blades (802, 804, 806) are tasked with reassembling data read from storage resources in the storage system, the authority for the segment ID containing the data is located as described above.

The compute resources (810, 812, 814) within the blades (802, 804, 806) may also be tasked with reassembling data read from storage resources in the storage system. The compute resources (810, 812, 814) that support the authority that owns the data may request the data from the appropriate storage resource. In some embodiments, the data may be read from flash storage as a data stripe. The compute resources (810, 812, 814) that support the authority that owns the data may be utilized to reassemble the read data, including correcting any errors according to the appropriate erasure coding scheme, and forward the reassembled data to the network. In other embodiments, breaking up and reassembling data, or some portion thereof, may be performed by the storage resources themselves.

The preceding paragraphs discuss the concept of a segment. A segment may represent a logical container of data in accordance with some embodiments. A segment may be embodied, for example, as an address space between medium address space and physical flash locations. Segments may also contain metadata that enables data redundancy to be restored (rewritten to different flash locations or devices) without the involvement of higher level software. In some embodiments, an internal format of a segment contains client data and medium mappings to determine the position of that data. Each data segment may be protected from memory and other failures, for example, by breaking the segment into a number of data and parity shards. The data and parity shards may be distributed by striping the shards across storage resources in accordance with an erasure coding scheme.

The examples described above relate, at least to some extent, to chassis for use in a storage system that supports independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources, blades for use in storage systems that support independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources, and storage systems that support independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources. Readers will appreciate that the resources that are independently scaled, compute resources and storage resources, are those resources that are generally available to users of the storage system. For example, the storage resources that are independently scaled may be storage resources that a user of the storage system can use to persistently store user data. Likewise, the compute resources that are independently scaled may be compute resources that a user of the storage system can use to support the execution of applications, authorities, and the like.

Readers will appreciate that while the host servers described above with reference to FIGS. 5, 6, and 8 include memory, such memory is not considered to be part of the storage resources that are independently scaled. Such memory is included in the host server for the purpose of supporting the execution of instructions by a processor that is also included in the host server. Such memory is not, however, included in the host server for the purpose of expanding the amount of storage that a storage system that includes the blades depicted in FIGS. 5, 6, and 8 can make available to users of the storage system. As such, a compute blade is described above as lacking storage resources, in spite of the fact that the compute blade can include some form of memory that may be used to support the execution of computer program instructions by the compute resources in the compute blade.

Readers will similarly appreciate that while the storage units described above with reference to FIGS. 5, 6, and 7 include an ARM and an FPGA, such devices are not considered to be part of the compute resources that are independently scaled. Such devices are included in the storage units for the purpose of accessing storage in the storage units in much the same way that a memory controller accesses memory. Such devices are not, however, included in the storage units for the purpose of expanding the amount of computing resources that a storage system that includes the blades depicted in FIGS. 5, 6, and 7 can make available to users of the storage system. As such, a storage blade is described above as lacking compute resources, in spite of the fact that the storage blade can include some devices that may be used to support the execution of computer program instructions that read and write data to attached storage.

For further explanation, FIG. 12 sets forth a block diagram of automated computing machinery comprising an example computer (952) useful in supporting independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure. The computer (952) of FIG. 12 includes at least one computer processor (956) or “CPU” as well as random access memory (“RAM”) (968) which is connected through a high speed memory bus (966) and bus adapter (958) to processor (956) and to other components of the computer (952). Stored in RAM (968) is a dynamic configuration module (926), a module of computer program instructions for useful in supporting independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments of the present disclosure. The dynamic configuration module (926) may be configured for supporting independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources by performing a variety of support functions such as, for example, detecting the insertion of a blade into a chassis through the receipt of one or more device registration messages, admitting a blade that has been powered up into the storage system, logically removing a blade that has been powered down from the storage system, maintaining information identifying available and unavailable resources in the storage system, and so on.

Also stored in RAM (968) is an operating system (954). Operating systems useful in computers configured for supporting independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments described herein include UNIX™, Linux™, Microsoft XP™, AIX™, IBM's i5/OS™, and others as will occur to those of skill in the art. The operating system (954) and dynamic configuration module (926) in the example of FIG. 9 are shown in RAM (968), but many components of such software typically are stored in non-volatile memory also, such as, for example, on a disk drive (970).

The example computer (952) of FIG. 12 also includes disk drive adapter (972) coupled through expansion bus (960) and bus adapter (958) to processor (956) and other components of the computer (952). Disk drive adapter (972) connects non-volatile data storage to the computer (952) in the form of disk drive (970). Disk drive adapters useful in computers configured for supporting independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments described herein include Integrated Drive Electronics (“IDE”) adapters, Small Computer System Interface (“SCSI”) adapters, and others as will occur to those of skill in the art. Non-volatile computer memory also may be implemented for as an optical disk drive, electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (so-called “EEPROM” or “Flash” memory), RAM drives, and so on, as will occur to those of skill in the art.

The example computer (952) of FIG. 12 includes one or more input/output (“I/O”) adapters (978). I/O adapters implement user-oriented input/output through, for example, software drivers and computer hardware for controlling output to display devices such as computer display screens, as well as user input from user input devices (982) such as keyboards and mice. The example computer (952) of FIG. 9 includes a video adapter (909), which is an example of an I/O adapter specially designed for graphic output to a display device (980) such as a display screen or computer monitor. Video adapter (909) is connected to processor (956) through a high speed video bus (964), bus adapter (958), and the front side bus (962), which is also a high speed bus.

The example computer (952) of FIG. 12 includes a communications adapter (967) for data communications with a storage system (984) as described above and for data communications with a data communications network (900). Such data communications may be carried out serially through RS-232 connections, through external buses such as a Universal Serial Bus (‘USB’), a Fibre Channel data communications link, an Infiniband data communications link, through data communications networks such as IP data communications networks, and in other ways as will occur to those of skill in the art. Communications adapters implement the hardware level of data communications through which one computer sends data communications to another computer, directly or through a data communications network. Examples of communications adapters useful in computers configured for supporting independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources according to embodiments described herein include Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) adapters for wired data communications, Fibre Channel adapters, Infiniband adapters, and so on.

The computer (952) may implement certain instructions stored on RAM (968) for execution by processor (956) for supporting independent scaling of compute resources and storage resources. In some embodiments, dynamically configuring the storage system to facilitate independent scaling of resources may be implemented as part of a larger set of executable instructions. For example, the dynamic configuration module (926) may be part of an overall system management process.

FIG. 13A sets forth a diagram of a single chassis 1116 storage system that has a switch 1002 for direct network-connected communication among computing resources 1004, 1006, 1008 and storage resources 1010, 1012, 1014 of the storage system according to embodiments of the present disclosure. The switch 1002 can be integrated with the chassis 1116, or separate from the chassis 1116, and is implemented as a network switch, an Ethernet switch, switch fabric, a switch matrix, a switch module, a fabric module or multiple switches in various embodiments. Multiple blades, which can be heterogeneous or homogeneous and include compute-only blades, storage-only blades or hybrid compute and storage blades in various combinations, populate the chassis 1116.

Each compute resource 1004, 1006, 1008 and each storage resource 1010, 1012, 1014 in the blades is direct network-connected to the switch 1002, for example without bridging to PCIe (peripheral component interconnect express) or other bridging or routing to other networks to communicate with a compute resource 1004, 1006, 1008 or a storage resource 1010, 1012, 1014. That is, the switch 1002 direct network-connects processors or compute resources and solid-state storage memory or storage resources in the storage system. Each compute resource 1004, 1006, 1008 can communicate with each other compute resource 1004, 1006, 1008 and with each storage resource 1010 1012, 1014, through the switch 1002. Each storage resource 1010, 1012, 1014 can communicate with each other storage resource 1010, 1012, 1014 and with each compute resource 1004, 1006, 1008, through the switch 1002. In some embodiments, communication uses Ethernet protocol, or other network protocol.

FIG. 13B sets forth a diagram of a multi-chassis 1116 storage system that has a switch 1002, 1016 for direct network-connected communication among compute resources 1004, 1008, 1018, 1020 and storage resources 1010, 1014, 1022, 1024 of the storage system according to embodiments of the present disclosure. Multiple chassis 1116 can be arranged on one or more racks or otherwise coupled by a switch 1016, such as a top of rack switch or other switch such as described with reference to FIG. 10A. Each chassis 1116 has multiple blades in heterogeneous or homogeneous arrangement with compute resources and storage resources, in various embodiments such as described with reference to FIG. 10A. The combination of the switches 1002 in each of the multiple chassis 1116 and the switch 1016 coupling the multiple chassis 1116 act as a switch 1002, 1016 that direct network-connects processors or compute resources and solid-state storage memory or storage resources in the storage system. In further embodiments, the switch 1002, 1016 is an integrated switch that both couples multiple chassis 1116 and couples compute resources 1004, 1008, 1018, 1020 and storage resources 1010, 1014, 1022, 1024 in the multiple chassis 1116.

As in single chassis embodiments, each compute resource 1004, 1008, 1018, 1020 can communicate with each other compute resource 1004, 1008, 1018, 1020 and with each storage resource 1010, 1014, 1022, 1024, through the switch 1002, 1016. Each storage resource 1010, 1014, 1022, 1024 can communicate with each other storage resource 1010, 1014, 1022, 1024 and with each compute resource 1004, 1008, 1018, 1020, through the switch 1002, 1016. In some embodiments, communication uses Ethernet protocol, or other network protocol.

Switch 1002, in single chassis storage systems such as shown in FIG. 13A, and switch 1002, 1016, in multi-chassis storage systems such as shown in FIG. 13B, support disaggregated compute resources and storage resources in the storage system. A storage resource and a computer resource do not need to be in the same blade, or even in the same chassis 1116 when communicating with each other. There is little or no penalty in terms of communication delay or latency, when communicating between any two compute resources or storage resources, or any compute resource and any storage resource, regardless of location in the storage system. All such resources can be treated as being approximately equally close, without need of aggregating resources in a given blade.

Disaggregation of compute resources and storage resources supports storage system expansion and scalability, because read and write accesses, data striping and all forms of communication among resources do not suffer worsening delays as the system grows. At most, there is a small communication delay penalty when going from a single chassis system to a multi-chassis system, as a result of the additional layer of switching in some embodiments, but no penalty for adding blades to either system, and no penalty for adding more chassis to a multi-chassis system.

FIG. 14A sets forth a diagram of a storage resource 1102 for embodiments of a storage system, with flash memory 1104 and a flash controller 1106 connected to a switch 1002 such as shown in FIGS. 13A and 13B. A suitable example of a flash controller 1106 is shown in FIGS. 5-7, with an ARM 516 (processor or CPU) and FPGA 520, and other flash controllers are readily devised. Further versions with other types of solid-state storage memory and other types of controller suitable to those memories are readily devised. The flash controller 1106 manages the flash memory 1104 and communicates with other resources using an appropriate network protocol through the switch 1002, thus supporting direct network-connection of the storage resource 1102. This version of a storage resource 1102 could be in a storage-only blade, or a hybrid compute and storage blade, in various embodiments.

FIG. 14B sets forth a diagram of a storage resource 1114 for embodiments of a storage system, with flash memory 1112, a NIC (network interface card or network interface controller) 1108 and a packet processing control processor 1110, with the NIC 1108 connected to a switch 1002 such as shown in FIGS. 13A and 13B. The NIC 1108 is implemented on a card, one or more integrated circuits, or as a module in an integrated circuit such as a full custom chip, ASIC or FPGA, in various embodiments, and can be local to the flash memory 1112 or remote from the flash memory 1112. A packet processing control processor 1110 connects to the flash memory 1112 and composes and decomposes packets with the NIC 1108, so that the flash memory 1112 can communicate over the switch 1002 with other resources in the storage system. As with the version of a storage resource 1102 shown in FIG. 11A, this version supports direct network-connection of the storage resource 1102 and could be in a storage-only blade or a hybrid compute and storage blade.

FIG. 14C sets forth a diagram of a storage resource 1118 for embodiments of a storage system, with network-connectable flash memory 1116 connected to a switch 1002 such as shown in FIGS. 13A and 13B. Network-connectable flash memory 1116 has a NIC 1108, flash controller 1106 or other module for network connection on chip or in package, in some embodiments. This supports direct network-connection of the storage resource 1118, and could be in a storage-only blade or a hybrid compute and storage blade.

FIG. 15 sets forth a diagram depicting compute resources 1004, 1006, 1008 voting to assign a host controller 1206 for a storage resource 1012 to one of the computing resources 1008. The host controller 1206 does not need to be assigned to a compute resource 1008 that has the storage resource 1012 on the same blade. That is, the host controller 1206 could be assigned to a compute resource 1008 on a different blade from the storage resource 1012 that is controlled by the host controller 1206, for example two hybrid blades, a compute-only blade and a storage-only blade, a hybrid blade and a storage-only blade, or a compute-only blade and a hybrid blade. Or the host controller 1206 could be assigned to a compute resource 1008 on the same blade that has the storage resource 1012 corresponding to the host controller 1206, e.g., a hybrid blade.

Various voting mechanisms and communication for voting are readily devised in keeping with the teachings herein. In some embodiments, each storage resource has an assigned host controller, in the compute resources. There could be zero, one, or more than one host controller on a given blade, in various embodiments, and host controllers could be transferred, reassigned to another blade, or replaced as resources are shifted or blades are added to or removed from the storage system, or a failure occurs. This ability to hold a vote 1202 and assign 1204 the host controller 1206 to any of a number of available compute resources supports disaggregated compute resources and storage resources in the storage system, because the storage memory is not required to be aggregated with the host controller that is managing the storage memory or processor(s) that are communicating with the storage memory for any specific communication. Host controller and corresponding storage memory are not required to be in the same blade, or even in the same chassis. In FIG. 12, the host controller 1206, no matter which compute resource 1004, 1006, 1008 and blade is assigned to have the host controller 1206, communicates with a corresponding storage resource 1012 through the switch 1208.

FIG. 16 is a flow diagram of a method of communicating in a storage system that has disaggregated compute resources and storage memory, which can be practiced by embodiments of storage systems described herein and variations thereof. The method can be practiced by various processors in the computing resources and storage resources in embodiments of storage systems. In an action 1302, computing resources and storage resources in various blades of a storage cluster are coupled through a network switch. The storage cluster could be single or multi chassis, and the blades could be homogeneous or heterogeneous. In an action 1304, compute resources cooperate to select, elect and/or assign host controllers in the computing resources, for the solid-state storage memories. Each host controller communicates with and manages a corresponding solid-state storage memory, but the host controller and corresponding solid-state storage memory are not required to be on the same blade (although they can be so).

In an action 1306 of FIG. 16, computing resources and storage resources communicate with each other through the network switch. For example, this communication could use Ethernet protocol. Communication can be among resources in a single chassis, or among resources in multiple chassis. In an action 1308, data stripes are written from computing resources and blades to storage resources in blades, by communication through the network switch. The storage resources have solid-state storage memories, in various embodiments. In an action 1310, data stripes are read from storage resources in the blades to computing resources in the blades, by communication through the network switch. Further embodiments of the method are readily devised, including variations with specific communications, specific resources, and various types of switches, blades, compute resources and storage resources as described herein for embodiments of storage systems.

FIG. 17 illustrates a 10 slot 1704 chassis 1702 with removable compute blades 1706 with 4 slots 1708 for flash modules in a 5 rack unit. The compute blades 1706 are removable from the front of the chassis 1702. Each compute blade 1706 in this example has four slots for removable modules, and each module in the compute blade 1706 is a flash memory module, or other type of storage memory module. Other types of modules, as further discussed below, could be used in various embodiments to reconfigure the blades. The five rack unit (5RU) chassis has two integrated external fabric modules (EFMs) in some embodiments.

FIG. 18 illustrates a system 1802 in an 8 rack unit with two fabric modules 1804 and 4 controllers 1806. Slots 1808 are shown occupied by blades with solid-state memory, in this example flash memory. In some embodiments, the blades have removable modules, with various amounts of solid-state memory, and the storage system supports heterogeneous mixes of modules and blades.

FIG. 19 illustrates 5 controllers 1902 and 22 custom storage modules 1904 with 2 flash modules in a 5 rack unit. Each of five CPU slots 1906 has a controller 1902 installed. In some embodiments, the flash modules in each storage module 1904 are removable, and may be replaced with various capacity flash modules, for example as a storage memory upgrade. In some embodiments, a flash module is replaceable with a compute module, to reconfigure the storage module 1904 as a combination compute and storage module, or, with both flash modules replaced by compute modules, as a compute-only module. Accordingly, this embodiment enables the addition of compute and storage together and/or separately for scaling or other purposes as the blade no longer has compute and flash embedded together. In some embodiments, the storage blade 702 of FIG. 7 may be modified to remove the ARM 516 and FPGA 520 and thus would be a storage module as described herein. In another embodiment, compute resource 810 of blade 802 of FIG. 11 is optional and thus there may exist a modular architecture where there is compute and flash, compute and accelerators or offload engines, or just flash, i.e., no compute. As described further below the, the system is designed to be modular for flexibility so that changes can be made easily through the replacement/substitution of modular components. Furthermore, the modular components may include accelerators or graphic processing units that are compatible with the form factor of the storage module and plug into or combine with the compute module. In some embodiments, the accelerators may replace the compute module on the main board. Various types of accelerators are described below.

FIG. 20 illustrates a 3 rack unit expansion shelf 2006. Both the horizontal slots 2004 and the vertical slots 2002 have blades/modules installed. The blades/modules have removable modules, or non-removable modules, in various embodiments. A heterogeneous mix of blades and/or a heterogeneous mix of modules is supported in various embodiments of storage systems. In some embodiments, there may be no modules added to a blade of the storage system. In this embodiment a new blade type can be inserted into the system where the new blade type uses the entire volume of the slot. The new blade type may have additional compute (such as a dual-socketed processor), a GPU, some other suitable accelerator, etc.

FIG. 21 illustrates servers 2102 with up to 8 drive slots each and corresponding fabric modules 2108. In this example, each server 2102 has NVRAM 2104 and one or more solid-state drives 2106 in the drive slots. Fully populated, the server 2102 can have eight solid-state drives 2106 in the drive slots. In some embodiments, the solid-state drives 2106 are removable modules. In some embodiments, the NVRAM 2104 is in a removable module.

FIG. 22 illustrates rack unit servers 2202 that are stateless plus an external shelf 2204. The external shelf 2204 is populated with storage memory blades 2206. In some embodiments, the blades 2206 have removable storage memory modules.

FIG. 23 illustrates rack unit servers 2302 that that include non-volatile random access memory 2304 plus an external shelf 2306. Storage memory blades 2308 are inserted in the external shelf 2306, and are removable. In some embodiments, each blade 2308 has one or more removable storage memory modules. It should be appreciated that FIGS. 17-23 illustrate various combinations of combining storage and compute that provides numerous axes of freedom for scaling. The compute and storage for the various embodiments may be added together into the system and/or separately as discussed herein. In addition, the fabric module coupling the blades may incorporate PCI and/or Ethernet. With reference to FIGS. 14A-14C the NIC 1108 and CPU 1110 are detachable modules. In addition NIC 1108 may be a SmartNIC or data processing unit that offloads work from the main engine. The offloaded work can include storage, compression, packet processing, and security functions. The data processing unit may be optimized for data movement in some embodiments.

FIG. 24A illustrates a blade 2402 with one type of slot 2404 for a removable module 2406, accessible by removing the blade 2402 from a chassis. Further embodiments with more than one slot 2404, and more than one removable module 2406, accessible with the blade 2402 removed are readily devised.

FIG. 24B illustrates a blade 2412 with another type of slot 2408 for a removable module 2410, accessible without removing the blade 2412 from the chassis. For example, if the blade 2412 is inserted to the left, into a chassis, the module 2410 can be inserted from the right, into the slot 2408 in the blade 2412 with the blade 2412 in the chassis. The module 2410 is also removable from the slot 2408 with the blade 2412 in the chassis.

FIG. 24C illustrates a blade 2414 with multiple slots 2408 for a removable module 2410. The module 2410 can be inserted into, or removed or exchanged from, any of the slots 2408, as can further modules 2410. Variations with various numbers of slots 2408 are readily devised.

With reference at least to FIGS. 24A-24C, there are many possible combinations and configurations of blades with various removable modules in various embodiments. One blade embodiment can be configured as a compute-only blade, a storage-only blade, and a combination compute and storage blade (also called a hybrid compute/storage blade), through selection of appropriate removable module(s). For example, a compute-only blade could have one or multiple removable modules each with compute resources such as one or more processors, a processor cluster, or multiple processor clusters. A storage-only blade could have one or multiple removable modules each with flash memory, other solid-state memory, or other storage memory, of homogeneous or heterogeneous amounts of memory, NVRAM, or combination of NVRAM and storage memory. A combination compute and storage blade could have one or more compute resources modules, and one or more storage resources modules. A compute-only blade can be reconfigured as or converted to a compute/storage blade or a storage-only blade. A storage-only blade can be reconfigured as or converted to a compute/storage blade or a compute-only blade. A compute/storage blade can be reconfigured as or converted to a compute-only or a storage-only blade. In essence, the blades described with the embodiments described herein can optionally have storage and that storage is detachable. The compute complex for the blades can optional connect to the detachable storage. Thus, the blade can be changed from a compute blade to a storage blade or vice versa rather than starting with a blade that is limited to a compute blade or a storage blade.

One embodiment of a removable module has one or more accelerators, as an accelerator module. The removable module may include one or more graphics processing units (GPUs), which can be used as processing resources. In some embodiments, the removable module has one or more neural networks, for example with appropriate processor(s), data structuring and connectivity. As mentioned above, the removable module has a smart network interface controller (SmartNIC), or more than one. One removable module has a data processing unit (DPU), or more than one. One removable module has a SmartNIC with a programmable DPU that performs data processing tasks such as compression/decompression, encryption/decryption in cooperation with the network interface controller, to offload network data handling and communication tasks from another processor(s), e.g., a blade processor or a storage controller. Through selectability of a variety of removable modules, a blade is configurable and reconfigurable multiple ways, in various embodiments. The accelerator may offload any software function from the main engine or host in some embodiments. It should be appreciated that the type of memory integrated into the embodiments is not limited to flash as other types of memory such as RAM, 3D crosspoint storage, etc. may be included.

FIG. 25 illustrates a flow diagram of a method that is practiced on or by embodiments of storage systems. This method of configuring a storage system, and variations thereof, makes use of removable modules, blades and storage systems described herein, and variations thereof.

In an action 2502, first data is accessed in the storage system. This could be user data, system data, metadata, etc., in various embodiments of storage systems that have blades.

In an action 2504, a removable module is added to a blade, or to each of multiple blades. Various suitable modules are described above. The addition of a removable module could be an addition of a new module, or a replacement of an existing module, on a blade. The removable module may be an accelerator or data processing unit as described herein. The blade could be made into a hybrid blade by adding compute resources or storage resources in some embodiment. As the components are modular the complexity and cost with replacing an entire blade is avoided.

In an action 2506, the first data or second data is accessed in the storage system. One or more of the blades has been reconfigured by adding the removable module. It is appreciated that the storage system is operational both before and after the addition of the removable module(s), be it a new addition, the replacement of one or more removable modules, or a combination of replacement and addition. The storage system may show new capabilities, features, or improvement, for example in storage capacity, type of storage memory, computational capacity, data handling, throughput and/or latency or other aspects of data management and access, from the addition or replacement of one or more removable modules.

Although some embodiments are described largely in the context of a storage system, readers of skill in the art will recognize that embodiments of the present disclosure may also take the form of a computer program product disposed upon computer readable storage media for use with any suitable processing system. Such computer readable storage media may be any storage medium for machine-readable information, including magnetic media, optical media, solid-state media, or other suitable media. Examples of such media include magnetic disks in hard drives or diskettes, compact disks for optical drives, magnetic tape, and others as will occur to those of skill in the art. Persons skilled in the art will immediately recognize that any computer system having suitable programming means will be capable of executing the steps described herein as embodied in a computer program product. Persons skilled in the art will recognize also that, although some of the embodiments described in this specification are oriented to software installed and executing on computer hardware, nevertheless, alternative embodiments implemented as firmware or as hardware are well within the scope of the present disclosure.

In some examples, a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-readable instructions may be provided in accordance with the principles described herein. The instructions, when executed by a processor of a computing device, may direct the processor and/or computing device to perform one or more operations, including one or more of the operations described herein. Such instructions may be stored and/or transmitted using any of a variety of known computer-readable media.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium as referred to herein may include any non-transitory storage medium that participates in providing data (e.g., instructions) that may be read and/or executed by a computing device (e.g., by a processor of a computing device). For example, a non-transitory computer-readable medium may include, but is not limited to, any combination of non-volatile storage media and/or volatile storage media. Exemplary non-volatile storage media include, but are not limited to, read-only memory, flash memory, a solid-state drive, a magnetic storage device (e.g. a hard disk, a floppy disk, magnetic tape, etc.), ferroelectric random-access memory (“RAM”), and an optical disc (e.g., a compact disc, a digital video disc, a Blu-ray disc, etc.). Exemplary volatile storage media include, but are not limited to, RAM (e.g., dynamic RAM).

Advantages and features of the present disclosure can be further described by the following statements:

1. A storage system, comprising:

a plurality of blades comprising, in aggregate, compute resources and storage resources; and

at least one of the plurality of blades having one or more removable modules.

2. The storage system of statement 1, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises storage memory as a portion of the storage resources.

3. The storage system of statement 1, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises one or more processors as a portion of the compute resources.

4. The storage system of statement 1, wherein the at least one of the plurality of blades, through selectability of the one or more removable modules, is configurable as each of a compute-only blade, a storage-only blade, and a combination compute and storage blade.

5. The storage system of statement 1, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises an accelerator module.

6. The storage system of statement 1, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises a data processing unit (DPU).

7. The storage system of statement 1, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises a smart network interface controller (SmartNIC).

8. The storage system of statement 1, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises one or more graphics processing units (GPU) as a portion of the compute resources.

9. The storage system of statement 1, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises a neural network as a portion of the compute resources.

10. The storage system of statement 1, wherein:

blades of the plurality of blades are coupled as a storage cluster or a storage array; and

the blades of the plurality of blades are heterogeneous as to the compute resources, the storage resources and the one or more removable modules.

11. The storage system of statement 1, wherein the at least one of the plurality of blades comprises a blade having a plurality of slots for a plurality of removable modules.

12. A storage system, comprising:

a plurality of blades coupled as a storage array or a storage cluster; and

each of one or more of the plurality of blades having one or more removable modules.

13. The storage system of statement 12, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises various amounts of flash memory.

14. The storage system of statement 12, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises one or more processors, data processing units, graphics processing units, or accelerators.

15. The storage system of statement 12, wherein the one or more of the plurality of blades, through the one or more removable modules, is configurable as a compute-only blade, configurable as a storage-only blade, and configurable as a combination compute and storage blade.

16. The storage system of statement 12, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises a SmartNIC having a DPU.

17. A method of configuring a storage system, comprising:

accessing first data in the storage system;

adding a removable module to each of one or more of a plurality of blades of a storage system; and

accessing the first data or second data in the storage system, with the one or more of the plurality of blades reconfigured by the adding the removable module to each of the one or more of the plurality of blades.

18. The method of statement 17, wherein the adding the removable module comprises adding a processor, storage memory, a SmartNIC, an accelerator, a DPU or a GPU.

19. The method of statement 17, further comprising:

removing a further removable module from another of the plurality of blades.

20. The method of statement 17, further comprising:

replacing a further removable module in another of the plurality of blades by a still further removable module.

One or more embodiments may be described herein with the aid of method steps illustrating the performance of specified functions and relationships thereof. The boundaries and sequence of these functional building blocks and method steps have been arbitrarily defined herein for convenience of description. Alternate boundaries and sequences can be defined so long as the specified functions and relationships are appropriately performed. Any such alternate boundaries or sequences are thus within the scope and spirit of the claims. Further, the boundaries of these functional building blocks have been arbitrarily defined for convenience of description. Alternate boundaries could be defined as long as the certain significant functions are appropriately performed. Similarly, flow diagram blocks may also have been arbitrarily defined herein to illustrate certain significant functionality.

To the extent used, the flow diagram block boundaries and sequence could have been defined otherwise and still perform the certain significant functionality. Such alternate definitions of both functional building blocks and flow diagram blocks and sequences are thus within the scope and spirit of the claims. One of average skill in the art will also recognize that the functional building blocks, and other illustrative blocks, modules and components herein, can be implemented as illustrated or by discrete components, application specific integrated circuits, processors executing appropriate software and the like or any combination thereof.

While particular combinations of various functions and features of the one or more embodiments are expressly described herein, other combinations of these features and functions are likewise possible. The present disclosure is not limited by the particular examples disclosed herein and expressly incorporates these other combinations. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A storage system, comprising: a plurality of blades comprising, in aggregate, compute resources and storage resources; and at least one of the plurality of blades having one or more removable modules.
 2. The storage system of claim 1, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises storage memory as a portion of the storage resources.
 3. The storage system of claim 1, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises one or more processors as a portion of the compute resources.
 4. The storage system of claim 1, wherein the at least one of the plurality of blades, through selectability of the one or more removable modules, is configurable as each of a compute-only blade, a storage-only blade, and a combination compute and storage blade.
 5. The storage system of claim 1, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises an accelerator module.
 6. The storage system of claim 1, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises a data processing unit (DPU).
 7. The storage system of claim 1, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises a smart network interface controller (SmartNIC).
 8. The storage system of claim 1, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises one or more graphics processing units (GPU) as a portion of the compute resources.
 9. The storage system of claim 1, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises a neural network as a portion of the compute resources.
 10. The storage system of claim 1, wherein: blades of the plurality of blades are coupled as a storage cluster or a storage array; and the blades of the plurality of blades are heterogeneous as to the compute resources, the storage resources and the one or more removable modules.
 11. The storage system of claim 1, wherein the at least one of the plurality of blades comprises a blade having a plurality of slots for a plurality of removable modules.
 12. A storage system, comprising: a plurality of blades coupled as a storage array or a storage cluster; and each of one or more of the plurality of blades having one or more removable modules.
 13. The storage system of claim 12, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises various amounts of flash memory.
 14. The storage system of claim 12, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises one or more processors, data processing units, graphics processing units, or accelerators.
 15. The storage system of claim 12, wherein the one or more of the plurality of blades, through the one or more removable modules, is configurable as a compute-only blade, configurable as a storage-only blade, and configurable as a combination compute and storage blade.
 16. The storage system of claim 12, wherein the one or more removable modules comprises a SmartNIC having a DPU.
 17. A method of configuring a storage system, comprising: accessing first data in the storage system; adding a removable module to each of one or more of a plurality of blades of a storage system; and accessing the first data or second data in the storage system, with the one or more of the plurality of blades reconfigured by the adding the removable module to each of the one or more of the plurality of blades.
 18. The method of claim 17, wherein the adding the removable module comprises adding a processor, storage memory, a SmartNIC, an accelerator, a DPU or a GPU.
 19. The method of claim 17, further comprising: removing a further removable module from another of the plurality of blades.
 20. The method of claim 17, further comprising: replacing a further removable module in another of the plurality of blades by a still further removable module. 